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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln,
+Volume Three, by Abraham Lincoln
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Volume Three
+       Constitutional Edition
+
+Author: Abraham Lincoln
+
+Commentator: Theodore Roosevelt, Carl Schurz, and Joseph Choate
+
+Editor: Arthur Brooks Lapsley
+
+Release Date: June, 2001  [Etext #2655]
+Posting Date: July 5, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LINCOLN'S PAPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PAPERS AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
+
+VOLUME THREE
+
+CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION
+
+By Abraham Lincoln
+
+
+Edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley
+
+
+
+
+THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I
+
+POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES of LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS In the Senatorial
+Campaign of 1858 in Illinois SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858
+
+
+[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of
+the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which
+Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as their candidate for United States
+Senator. Mr. DOUGLAS was not present.]
+
+
+Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first know
+where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to
+do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy
+was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting
+an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that
+agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my
+opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and
+passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this
+government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not
+expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but
+I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing,
+or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further
+spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
+that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will
+push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old
+as well as new, North as well as South.
+
+Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
+
+Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete
+legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the
+Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only
+what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also
+let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or
+rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of
+action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
+
+The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
+States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by
+Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which
+ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the
+National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
+
+But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people,
+real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and
+give chance for more.
+
+This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well
+as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise
+called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though
+expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted
+in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man
+choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That
+argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language
+which follows:
+
+"It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery
+into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave
+the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
+institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
+United States."
+
+Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
+sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said
+opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare
+that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the
+friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.
+
+While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
+involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having
+voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory
+covered by the Congressional Prohibition, and held him as a slave for a
+long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for
+the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought
+to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred
+Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case.
+Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was
+argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it
+was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
+Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
+the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory
+can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
+answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."
+
+The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such
+as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement,
+however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred
+thousand votes,(approximately 10% of the vote) and so, perhaps, was not
+overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his
+last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the
+people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court
+met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The
+Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but
+the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the
+people to abide by the forth-coming decision, whatever it might be. Then,
+in a few days, came the decision.
+
+The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a
+speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
+denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
+occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that
+decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever
+been entertained!
+
+At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
+the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
+Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of
+Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a
+fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted
+down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not
+whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
+than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public
+mind,--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is
+ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he
+has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the
+only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott
+decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down
+like temporary scaffolding; like the mould at the foundry, served through
+one blast, and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election,
+and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the
+Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the
+original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the
+right of a people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the
+Republicans have never differed.
+
+The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator
+Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its
+present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working
+points of that machinery are:
+
+Firstly, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no
+descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense
+of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point
+is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the
+benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution which declares
+that "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
+immunities of citizens in the several States."
+
+Secondly, That, "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
+neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from
+any United States Territory. This point is made in order that individual
+men may fill up the Territories with slaves, without danger of losing
+them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the
+institution through all the future.
+
+Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free
+State makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will
+not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State
+the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to
+be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently
+indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical
+conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred
+Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do
+with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other
+free State.
+
+Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
+doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion,
+at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted
+down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially,
+also, wither we are tending.
+
+It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind
+over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things
+will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were
+transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only
+to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders
+could not then see. Plainly enough now,--it was an exactly fitted niche,
+for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect
+freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment,
+expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough
+now,--the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred
+Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's
+individual opinion withheld, till after the Presidential election? Plainly
+enough now,--the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly
+free" argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the
+outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a
+reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of
+the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a
+spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may
+give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision
+by the President and others?
+
+We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
+of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions
+of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by
+different workmen, Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance, and
+when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
+frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting,
+and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
+adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too
+few,--not omitting even scaffolding,--or, if a single piece be lacking, we
+see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such
+piece in,--in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that
+Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from
+the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before
+the first blow was struck.
+
+It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska Bill the people of a
+State as well as Territory were to be left "perfectly free," "subject
+only to the Constitution." Why mention a State? They were legislating for
+Territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State
+are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but
+why is mention of this lugged into this merely Territorial law? Why
+are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped
+together, and their relation to the Constitution therefore treated as
+being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice
+Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the
+concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United
+States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude
+slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether
+or not the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, to
+exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure,
+if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of
+unlimited power in the people of a State to exclude slavery from their
+limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf
+of the people of a Territory, into the Nebraska Bill,--I ask, who can be
+quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it
+had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the
+power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it
+more than once, Using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of
+the Nebraska Act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "Except in cases
+where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States,
+the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its
+jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by
+the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the
+same question, as to the restraint on the power of the Territories, was
+left open in the Nebraska Act. Put this and that together, and we have
+another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another
+Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United
+States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And
+this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether
+slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind
+sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when
+made.
+
+Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all
+the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and
+will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty
+shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that
+the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and
+we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made
+Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is
+the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is
+what we have to do. How can we best do it?
+
+There are those who denounce us openly to their friends, and yet whisper
+to us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with
+which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that
+he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty, and that
+he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we
+have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the
+largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog
+is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this
+work is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances
+of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is
+impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas
+Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to
+resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an
+effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he
+really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has
+labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into
+the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right
+to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can
+be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his
+power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of
+property; and, as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade, how can
+he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free,"--unless
+he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home
+producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without
+a ground of opposition.
+
+Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day
+than he was yesterday; that he may rightfully change when he finds himself
+wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make
+any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we
+safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish
+not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do
+aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and
+we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance
+from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious
+obstacles. But clearly he is not now with us; he does not pretend to
+be,--he does not promise ever to be.
+
+Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted
+friends,--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do
+care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered
+over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single
+impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance
+against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered
+from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the
+constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we
+brave all then to falter now,--now, when that same enemy is wavering,
+dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
+fail; if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate,
+or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858.
+
+IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS
+
+DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 10, 1858.
+
+(Mr. DOUGLAS WAS NOT PRESENT.)
+
+[Mr. LINCOLN was introduced by C. L. Wilson, Esq., and as he made his
+appearance he was greeted with a perfect storm of applause. For some
+moments the enthusiasm continued unabated. At last, when by a wave of his
+hand partial silence was restored, Mr. LINCOLN said,]
+
+MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--On yesterday evening, upon the occasion of the
+reception given to Senator Douglas, I was furnished with a seat very
+convenient for hearing him, and was otherwise very courteously treated by
+him and his friends, and for which I thank him and them. During the course
+of his remarks my name was mentioned in such a way as, I suppose, renders
+it at least not improper that I should make some sort of reply to him. I
+shall not attempt to follow him in the precise order in which he addressed
+the assembled multitude upon that occasion, though I shall perhaps do so
+in the main.
+
+There was one question to which he asked the attention of the crowd, which
+I deem of somewhat less importance--at least of propriety--for me to dwell
+upon than the others, which he brought in near the close of his speech,
+and which I think it would not be entirely proper for me to omit attending
+to, and yet if I were not to give some attention to it now, I should
+probably forget it altogether. While I am upon this subject, allow me to
+say that I do not intend to indulge in that inconvenient mode sometimes
+adopted in public speaking, of reading from documents; but I shall depart
+from that rule so far as to read a little scrap from his speech, which
+notices this first topic of which I shall speak,--that is, provided I can
+find it in the paper:
+
+"I have made up my mind to appeal to the people against the combination
+that has been made against me; the Republican leaders having formed an
+alliance, an unholy and unnatural alliance, with a portion of unscrupulous
+Federal office-holders. I intend to fight that allied army wherever I meet
+them. I know they deny the alliance; but yet these men who are trying
+to divide the Democratic party for the purpose of electing a Republican
+Senator in my place are just as much the agents and tools of the
+supporters of Mr. Lincoln. Hence I shall deal with this allied army
+just as the Russians dealt with the Allies at Sebastopol,--that is, the
+Russians did not stop to inquire, when they fired a broadside, whether it
+hit an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Turk. Nor will I stop to inquire,
+nor shall I hesitate, whether my blows shall hit the Republican leaders
+or their allies, who are holding the Federal offices, and yet acting in
+concert with them."
+
+Well, now, gentlemen, is not that very alarming? Just to think of it!
+right at the outset of his canvass, I, a poor, kind, amiable, intelligent
+gentleman,--I am to be slain in this way! Why, my friend the Judge is not
+only, as it turns out, not a dead lion, nor even a living one,--he is the
+rugged Russian Bear!
+
+But if they will have it--for he says that we deny it--that there is any
+such alliance, as he says there is,--and I don't propose hanging very much
+upon this question of veracity,--but if he will have it that there is such
+an alliance, that the Administration men and we are allied, and we stand
+in the attitude of English, French, and Turk, he occupying the position
+of the Russian, in that case I beg that he will indulge us while we barely
+suggest to him that these allies took Sebastopol.
+
+Gentlemen, only a few more words as to this alliance. For my part, I have
+to say that whether there be such an alliance depends, so far as I know,
+upon what may be a right definition of the term alliance. If for the
+Republican party to see the other great party to which they are opposed
+divided among themselves, and not try to stop the division, and rather be
+glad of it,--if that is an alliance, I confess I am in; but if it is meant
+to be said that the Republicans had formed an alliance going beyond that,
+by which there is contribution of money or sacrifice of principle on the
+one side or the other, so far as the Republican party is concerned,--if
+there be any such thing, I protest that I neither know anything of it,
+nor do I believe it. I will, however, say,--as I think this branch of the
+argument is lugged in,--I would before I leave it state, for the benefit
+of those concerned, that one of those same Buchanan men did once tell me
+of an argument that he made for his opposition to Judge Douglas. He said
+that a friend of our Senator Douglas had been talking to him, and had,
+among other things, said to him:
+
+"...why, you don't want to beat Douglas?" "Yes," said he, "I do want to
+beat him, and I will tell you why. I believe his original Nebraska Bill
+was right in the abstract, but it was wrong in the time that it was
+brought forward. It was wrong in the application to a Territory in regard
+to which the question had been settled; it was brought forward at a time
+when nobody asked him; it was tendered to the South when the South had not
+asked for it, but when they could not well refuse it; and for this same
+reason he forced that question upon our party. It has sunk the best men
+all over the nation, everywhere; and now, when our President, struggling
+with the difficulties of this man's getting up, has reached the very
+hardest point to turn in the case, he deserts him and I am for putting him
+where he will trouble us no more."
+
+Now, gentlemen, that is not my argument; that is not my argument at all.
+I have only been stating to you the argument of a Buchanan man. You will
+judge if there is any force in it.
+
+Popular sovereignty! Everlasting popular sovereignty! Let us for a moment
+inquire into this vast matter of popular sovereignty. What is popular
+sovereignty? We recollect that at an early period in the history of
+this struggle there was another name for the same thing,--"squatter
+sovereignty." It was not exactly popular sovereignty, but squatter
+sovereignty. What do those terms mean? What do those terms mean when used
+now? And vast credit is taken by our friend the Judge in regard to his
+support of it, when he declares the last years of his life have been,
+and all the future years of his life shall be, devoted to this matter of
+popular sovereignty. What is it? Why, it is the sovereignty of the people!
+What was squatter sovereignty? I suppose, if it had any significance at
+all, it was the right of the people to govern themselves, to be sovereign
+in their own affairs while they were squatted down in a country not their
+own, while they had squatted on a Territory that did not belong to them,
+in the sense that a State belongs to the people who inhabit it, when
+it belonged to the nation; such right to govern themselves was called
+"squatter sovereignty."
+
+Now, I wish you to mark: What has become of that squatter sovereignty?
+what has become of it? Can you get anybody to tell you now that the people
+of a Territory have any authority to govern themselves, in regard to this
+mooted question of slavery, before they form a State constitution? No such
+thing at all; although there is a general running fire, and although there
+has been a hurrah made in every speech on that side, assuming that policy
+had given the people of a Territory the right to govern themselves upon
+this question, yet the point is dodged. To-day it has been decided--no
+more than a year ago it was decided--by the Supreme Court of the United
+States, and is insisted upon to-day that the people of a Territory have no
+right to exclude slavery from a Territory; that if any one man chooses to
+take slaves into a Territory, all the rest of the people have no right
+to keep them out. This being so, and this decision being made one of the
+points that the Judge approved, and one in the approval of which he says
+he means to keep me down,--put me down I should not say, for I have never
+been up,--he says he is in favor of it, and sticks to it, and expects to
+win his battle on that decision, which says that there is no such thing
+as squatter sovereignty, but that any one man may take slaves into a
+Territory, and all the other men in the Territory may be opposed to it,
+and yet by reason of the Constitution they cannot prohibit it. When that
+is so, how much is left of this vast matter of squatter sovereignty, I
+should like to know?
+
+When we get back, we get to the point of the right of the people to make a
+constitution. Kansas was settled, for example, in 1854. It was a Territory
+yet, without having formed a constitution, in a very regular way, for
+three years. All this time negro slavery could be taken in by any few
+individuals, and by that decision of the Supreme Court, which the Judge
+approves, all the rest of the people cannot keep it out; but when they
+come to make a constitution, they may say they will not have slavery. But
+it is there; they are obliged to tolerate it some way, and all experience
+shows it will be so, for they will not take the negro slaves and
+absolutely deprive the owners of them. All experience shows this to be so.
+All that space of time that runs from the beginning of the settlement
+of the Territory until there is sufficiency of people to make a State
+constitution,--all that portion of time popular sovereignty is given up.
+The seal is absolutely put down upon it by the court decision, and Judge
+Douglas puts his own upon the top of that; yet he is appealing to the
+people to give him vast credit for his devotion to popular sovereignty.
+
+Again, when we get to the question of the right of the people to form
+a State constitution as they please, to form it with slavery or without
+slavery, if that is anything new, I confess I don't know it. Has there
+ever been a time when anybody said that any other than the people of a
+Territory itself should form a constitution? What is now in it that Judge
+Douglas should have fought several years of his life, and pledge himself
+to fight all the remaining years of his life for? Can Judge Douglas find
+anybody on earth that said that anybody else should form a constitution
+for a people? [A voice, "Yes."] Well, I should like you to name him; I
+should like to know who he was. [Same voice, "John Calhoun."]
+
+No, sir, I never heard of even John Calhoun saying such a thing. He
+insisted on the same principle as Judge Douglas; but his mode of applying
+it, in fact, was wrong. It is enough for my purpose to ask this crowd
+whenever a Republican said anything against it. They never said anything
+against it, but they have constantly spoken for it; and whoever will
+undertake to examine the platform, and the speeches of responsible men of
+the party, and of irresponsible men, too, if you please, will be unable to
+find one word from anybody in the Republican ranks opposed to that popular
+sovereignty which Judge Douglas thinks that he has invented. I suppose
+that Judge Douglas will claim, in a little while, that he is the inventor
+of the idea that the people should govern themselves; that nobody ever
+thought of such a thing until he brought it forward. We do not remember
+that in that old Declaration of Independence it is said that:
+
+"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
+that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;
+that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
+secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
+just powers from the consent of the governed."
+
+There is the origin of popular sovereignty. Who, then, shall come in at
+this day and claim that he invented it?
+
+The Lecompton Constitution connects itself with this question, for it is
+in this matter of the Lecompton Constitution that our friend Judge
+Douglas claims such vast credit. I agree that in opposing the Lecompton
+Constitution, so far as I can perceive, he was right. I do not deny that
+at all; and, gentlemen, you will readily see why I could not deny it,
+even if I wanted to. But I do not wish to; for all the Republicans in the
+nation opposed it, and they would have opposed it just as much without
+Judge Douglas's aid as with it. They had all taken ground against it long
+before he did. Why, the reason that he urges against that constitution I
+urged against him a year before. I have the printed speech in my hand. The
+argument that he makes, why that constitution should not be adopted, that
+the people were not fairly represented nor allowed to vote, I pointed out
+in a speech a year ago, which I hold in my hand now, that no fair chance
+was to be given to the people. ["Read it, Read it."] I shall not waste
+your time by trying to read it. ["Read it, Read it."] Gentlemen, reading
+from speeches is a very tedious business, particularly for an old man that
+has to put on spectacles, and more so if the man be so tall that he has to
+bend over to the light.
+
+A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and the
+Lecompton Constitution. The Lecompton Constitution, as the Judge tells us,
+was defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing or it was not. He thinks
+the defeat of it was a good thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who
+defeated it?
+
+[A voice: Judge Douglas.]
+
+Yes, he furnished himself, and if you suppose he controlled the other
+Democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes; while the
+Republicans furnished twenty.
+
+That is what he did to defeat it. In the House of Representatives he and
+his friends furnished some twenty votes, and the Republicans furnished
+ninety odd. Now, who was it that did the work?
+
+[A voice: Douglas.]
+
+Why, yes, Douglas did it! To be sure he did.
+
+Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The Republicans could
+not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without
+them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?
+
+[A voice: Who killed the bill?]
+
+[Another voice: Douglas.]
+
+Ground was taken against it by the Republicans long before Douglas did it.
+The proportion of opposition to that measure is about five to one.
+
+[A voice: Why don't they come out on it?]
+
+You don't know what you are talking about, my friend. I am quite willing
+to answer any gentleman in the crowd who asks an intelligent question.
+
+Now, who in all this country has ever found any of our friends of Judge
+Douglas's way of thinking, and who have acted upon this main question,
+that has ever thought of uttering a word in behalf of Judge Trumbull?
+
+[A voice: We have.]
+
+I defy you to show a printed resolution passed in a Democratic meeting--I
+take it upon myself to defy any man to show a printed resolution of a
+Democratic meeting, large or small--in favor of Judge Trumbull, or any of
+the five to one Republicans who beat that bill. Everything must be for the
+Democrats! They did everything, and the five to the one that really did
+the thing they snub over, and they do not seem to remember that they have
+an existence upon the face of the earth.
+
+Gentlemen, I fear that I shall become tedious. I leave this branch of the
+subject to take hold of another. I take up that part of Judge Douglas's
+speech in which he respectfully attended to me.
+
+Judge Douglas made two points upon my recent speech at Springfield. He
+says they are to be the issues of this campaign. The first one of these
+points he bases upon the language in a speech which I delivered at
+Springfield, which I believe I can quote correctly from memory. I
+said there that "we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was
+instituted for the avowed object, and with the confident promise, of
+putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy,
+that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented."
+"I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and
+passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this
+government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." "I do not
+expect the Union to be dissolved,"--I am quoting from my speech, "--I do
+not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
+It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of
+slavery will arrest the spread of it and place it where the public mind
+shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction,
+or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful
+in all the States, north as well as south."
+
+What is the paragraph? In this paragraph, which I have quoted in your
+hearing, and to which I ask the attention of all, Judge Douglas thinks he
+discovers great political heresy. I want your attention particularly to
+what he has inferred from it. He says I am in favor of making all the
+States of this Union uniform in all their internal regulations; that in
+all their domestic concerns I am in favor of making them entirely uniform.
+He draws this inference from the language I have quoted to you. He says
+that I am in favor of making war by the North upon the South for the
+extinction of slavery; that I am also in favor of inviting (as he
+expresses it) the South to a war upon the North for the purpose of
+nationalizing slavery. Now, it is singular enough, if you will carefully
+read that passage over, that I did not say that I was in favor of anything
+in it. I only said what I expected would take place. I made a prediction
+only,--it may have been a foolish one, perhaps. I did not even say that I
+desired that slavery should be put in course of ultimate extinction. I do
+say so now, however, so there need be no longer any difficulty about that.
+It may be written down in the great speech.
+
+Gentlemen, Judge Douglas informed you that this speech of mine was
+probably carefully prepared. I admit that it was. I am not master of
+language; I have not a fine education; I am not capable of entering into
+a disquisition upon dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not
+believe the language I employed bears any such construction as Judge
+Douglas puts upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words.
+I know what I meant, and I will not leave this crowd in doubt, if I can
+explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph.
+
+I am not, in the first place, unaware that this government has endured
+eighty-two years half slave and half free. I know that. I am tolerably
+well acquainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has
+endured eighty-two years half slave and half free. I believe--and that is
+what I meant to allude to there--I believe it has endured because during
+all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska Bill, the public
+mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of
+ultimate extinction. That was what gave us the rest that we had through
+that period of eighty-two years,--at least, so I believe. I have always
+hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist,--I have been an Old
+Line Whig,--I have always hated it; but I have always been quiet about
+it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began. I
+always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course
+of ultimate extinction. [Pointing to Mr. Browning, who stood near by.]
+Browning thought so; the great mass of the nation have rested in the
+belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction. They had reason
+so to believe.
+
+The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the
+people to believe so; and that such was the belief of the framers of the
+Constitution itself, why did those old men, about the time of the adoption
+of the Constitution, decree that slavery should not go into the new
+Territory, where it had not already gone? Why declare that within twenty
+years the African slave trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut
+off by Congress? Why were all these acts? I might enumerate more of these
+acts; but enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers
+of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of
+that institution? And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge
+Douglas has quoted from, when I say that I think the opponents of slavery
+will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind
+shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,
+I only mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this
+government originally placed it.
+
+I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it
+back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination, in
+the people of the free States to enter into the slave States and interfere
+with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge
+Douglas has heard me say it, if not quite a hundred times, at least
+as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of
+interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by
+anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever
+said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so
+construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I now correct it.
+
+So much, then, for the inference that Judge Douglas draws, that I am in
+favor of setting the sections at war with one another. I know that I never
+meant any such thing, and I believe that no fair mind can infer any such
+thing from anything I have ever said.
+
+Now, in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general
+consolidation of all the local institutions of the various States. I will
+attend to that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, how on
+earth it could be that any man could draw such an inference from anything
+I said. I have said, very many times, in Judge Douglas's hearing, that no
+man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies
+at the bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end. I
+have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the thing
+itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to
+the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it. I
+think that I have said it in your hearing, that I believe each individual
+is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of
+his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights;
+that each community as a State has a right to do exactly as it pleases
+with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the right of
+no other State; and that the General Government, upon principle, has no
+right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things
+that does concern the whole. I have said that at all times. I have said,
+as illustrations, that I do not believe in the right of Illinois to
+interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia,
+or the liquor laws of Maine. I have said these things over and over again,
+and I repeat them here as my sentiments.
+
+How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see slavery
+put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
+course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of Illinois going over
+and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can authorize him
+to draw any such inference?
+
+I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw
+such an inference that would not be true with me or many others: that is,
+because he looks upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little
+thing,--this matter of keeping one sixth of the population of the whole
+nation in a state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. He
+looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing,--only equal to the
+question of the cranberry laws of Indiana; as something having no moral
+question in it; as something on a par with the question of whether a man
+shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco; so little
+and so small a thing that he concludes, if I could desire that anything
+should be done to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little
+thing, I must be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all
+the other little things in the Union. Now, it so happens--and there, I
+presume, is the foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus;
+and it so happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that
+do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look
+upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it as such by the writings of
+those who gave us the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they
+so looked upon it, and not as an evil merely confining itself to the
+States where it is situated; and while we agree that, by the Constitution
+we assented to, in the States where it exists, we have no right to
+interfere with it, because it is in the Constitution; and we are by both
+duty and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter and
+spirit, from beginning to end.
+
+So much, then, as to my disposition--my wish to have all the State
+legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated government, and a
+uniformity of domestic regulations in all the States, by which I suppose
+it is meant, if we raise corn here, we must make sugar-cane grow here
+too, and we must make those which grow North grow in the South. All this
+I suppose he understands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much for all this
+nonsense; for I must call it so. The Judge can have no issue with me on
+a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the
+States.
+
+A little now on the other point,--the Dred Scott decision. Another of the
+issues he says that is to be made with me is upon his devotion to the Dred
+Scott decision, and my opposition to it.
+
+I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the
+Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of
+that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly
+implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, "resistance to the decision"?
+I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I
+would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that
+Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But
+I am doing no such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to
+obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come
+up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory,
+in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.
+
+That is what I should do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the
+decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the
+decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by
+it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the
+decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it
+where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it
+is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and
+we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.
+
+What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of
+property they have two uses. First, they decide upon the question before
+the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody
+resists that, not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons
+standing just as Dred Scott stands are as he is. That is, they say that
+when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again,
+unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its
+decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the
+other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do.
+
+The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision is a degree
+of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision.
+I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary
+to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that
+decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the first of
+its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the
+world. It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts; allegations
+of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances, and
+no decision made on any question--the first instance of a decision made
+under so many unfavorable circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held
+by the profession as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the
+lawyers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it
+that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these
+extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance
+with it, yield to it, and obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances
+alter cases. Do not gentlemen here remember the case of that same Supreme
+Court some twenty-five or thirty years ago deciding that a National Bank
+was constitutional? I ask, if somebody does not remember that a National
+Bank was declared to be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be
+remembered or not. The Bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted
+by Congress. That recharter was laid before General Jackson. It was urged
+upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the Bank, that the
+Supreme Court had decided that it was constitutional; and General Jackson
+then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern
+a coordinate branch of the government, the members of which had sworn
+to support the Constitution; that each member had sworn to support that
+Constitution as he understood it. I will venture here to say that I have
+heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act.
+What has now become of all his tirade about "resistance of the Supreme
+Court"?
+
+My fellow-citizens, getting back a little,--for I pass from these
+points,--when Judge Douglas makes his threat of annihilation upon the
+"alliance," he is cautious to say that that warfare of his is to fall
+upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word he utters,
+and every distinction he makes, has its significance. He means for the
+Republicans who do not count themselves as leaders, to be his friends; he
+makes no fuss over them; it is the leaders that he is making war upon. He
+wants it understood that the mass of the Republican party are really
+his friends. It is only the leaders that are doing something that are
+intolerant, and that require extermination at his hands. As this is dearly
+and unquestionably the light in which he presents that matter, I want to
+ask your attention, addressing myself to the Republicans here, that I may
+ask you some questions as to where you, as the Republican party, would
+be placed if you sustained Judge Douglas in his present position by a
+re-election? I do not claim, gentlemen, to be unselfish; I do not pretend
+that I would not like to go to the United States Senate,--I make no such
+hypocritical pretense; but I do say to you that in this mighty issue it is
+nothing to you--nothing to the mass of the people of the nation,--whether
+or not Judge Douglas or myself shall ever be heard of after this night;
+it may be a trifle to either of us, but in connection with this mighty
+question, upon which hang the destinies of the nation, perhaps, it is
+absolutely nothing: but where will you be placed if you reindorse Judge
+Douglas? Don't you know how apt he is, how exceedingly anxious he is at
+all times, to seize upon anything and everything to persuade you that
+something he has done you did yourselves? Why, he tried to persuade you
+last night that our Illinois Legislature instructed him to introduce the
+Nebraska Bill. There was nobody in that Legislature ever thought of such a
+thing; and when he first introduced the bill, he never thought of it; but
+still he fights furiously for the proposition, and that he did it because
+there was a standing instruction to our Senators to be always introducing
+Nebraska bills. He tells you he is for the Cincinnati platform, he tells
+you he is for the Dred Scott decision. He tells you, not in his speech
+last night, but substantially in a former speech, that he cares not if
+slavery is voted up or down; he tells you the struggle on Lecompton is
+past; it may come up again or not, and if it does, he stands where
+he stood when, in spite of him and his opposition, you built up the
+Republican party. If you indorse him, you tell him you do not care whether
+slavery be voted up or down, and he will close or try to close your mouths
+with his declaration, repeated by the day, the week, the month, and the
+year. Is that what you mean? [Cries of "No," one voice "Yes."] Yes, I have
+no doubt you who have always been for him, if you mean that. No doubt of
+that, soberly I have said, and I repeat it. I think, in the position in
+which Judge Douglas stood in opposing the Lecompton Constitution, he was
+right; he does not know that it will return, but if it does we may know
+where to find him, and if it does not, we may know where to look for him,
+and that is on the Cincinnati platform. Now, I could ask the Republican
+party, after all the hard names that Judge Douglas has called them by all
+his repeated charges of their inclination to marry with and hug negroes;
+all his declarations of Black Republicanism,--by the way, we are
+improving, the black has got rubbed off,--but with all that, if he be
+indorsed by Republican votes, where do you stand? Plainly, you stand ready
+saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the
+slavery extension camp of the nation,--just ready to be driven over, tied
+together in a lot, to be driven over, every man with a rope around his
+neck, that halter being held by Judge Douglas. That is the question. If
+Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they
+had better not do it; but I think that the Republican party is made up
+of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the extension of
+slavery, and who will hope for its ultimate extinction. If they believe
+it is wrong in grasping up the new lands of the continent and keeping them
+from the settlement of free white laborers, who want the land to bring
+up their families upon; if they are in earnest, although they may make a
+mistake, they will grow restless, and the time will come when they will
+come back again and reorganize, if not by the same name, at least upon the
+same principles as their party now has. It is better, then, to save the
+work while it is begun. You have done the labor; maintain it, keep it.
+If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as you have made up your
+organization upon principle, stand by it; for, as surely as God reigns
+over you, and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense of propriety,
+and continues to give you hope, so surely will you still cling to these
+ideas, and you will at last come back again after your wanderings, merely
+to do your work over again.
+
+We were often,--more than once, at least,--in the course of Judge
+Douglas's speech last night, reminded that this government was made for
+white men; that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is
+putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the Judge
+then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not warranted.
+I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes
+that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily
+want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for
+either, but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and
+do one another much good thereby. There are white men enough to marry all
+the white women, and enough black men to marry all the black women; and in
+God's name let them be so married. The Judge regales us with the terrible
+enormities that take place by the mixture of races; that the inferior race
+bears the superior down. Why, Judge, if we do not let them get together in
+the Territories, they won't mix there.
+
+[A voice: "Three cheers for Lincoln".--The cheers were given with a hearty
+good-will.]
+
+I should say at least that that is a self-evident truth.
+
+Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometimes about
+the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings
+I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I
+suppose to be some of them.
+
+We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or about thirty millions of
+people, and we own and inhabit about one fifteenth part of the dry land
+of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for
+about eighty-two years, and we discover that we were then a very small
+people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a
+vastly less extent of country, with vastly less of everything we deem
+desirable among men; we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous
+to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened
+away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of
+prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as
+our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men; they fought for the
+principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what
+they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity which we now
+enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves
+of all the good done in this process of time, of how it was done and who
+did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from
+these meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel more attached the
+one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In
+every way we are better men in the age and race and country in which we
+live, for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have
+not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We
+have--besides these, men descended by blood from our ancestors--among us
+perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men;
+they are men who have come from Europe, German, Irish, French, and
+Scandinavian,--men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose
+ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals
+in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their
+connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot
+carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel
+that they are part of us; but when they look through that old Declaration
+of Independence, they find that those old men say that "We hold these
+truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"; and then
+they feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, evidences their
+relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in
+them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of
+the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration;
+and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links
+the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link
+those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds
+of men throughout the world.
+
+Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of "don't
+care if slavery is voted up or voted down," for sustaining the Dred Scott
+decision, for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean
+anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the
+Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the
+people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his
+construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you in all
+soberness if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed
+and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend
+to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this
+government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are
+made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as
+they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their
+condition will allow,--what are these arguments? They are the arguments
+that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world.
+You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this
+class; they always bestrode the necks of the people not that they wanted
+to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That
+is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent
+that says, You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of
+it. Turn in whatever way you will, whether it come from the mouth of a
+king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth
+of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it
+is all the same old serpent; and I hold, if that course of argumentation
+that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should
+not care about this should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I
+should like to know, if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which
+declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to
+it, where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not
+another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is not
+the truth, let us get the statute book, in which we find it, and tear it
+out! Who is so bold as to do it? If it is not true, let us tear it out!
+[Cries of "No, no."] Let us stick to it, then; let us stand firmly by it,
+then.
+
+It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities
+and impose them upon us; and to the extent that a necessity is imposed
+upon a man, he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which
+we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slavery
+among us, we could not get our Constitution unless we permitted them
+to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we
+grasped for more; and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does
+not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let that
+charter stand as our standard.
+
+My friend has said to me that I am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will
+try it again, however. It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord,
+"As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." The Savior, I
+suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be perfect as the
+Father in heaven; but he said, "As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye
+also perfect." He set that up as a standard; and he who did most towards
+reaching that standard attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So
+I say in relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let
+it be as nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give freedom to every
+creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other
+creature. Let us then turn this government back into the channel in which
+the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand
+firmly by each other. If we do not do so, we are turning in the contrary
+direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes--not intentionally--as
+working in the traces tends to make this one universal slave nation. He is
+one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him.
+
+My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I
+have only to say: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the
+other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior,
+and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our
+standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite
+as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up
+declaring that all men are created equal.
+
+My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic, which
+would detain you too long, continue to-night. I thank you for this most
+extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night. I leave you,
+hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall
+no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858.
+
+DELIVERED SATURDAY EVENING
+
+(Mr. Douglas was not present.)
+
+FELLOW-CITIZENS:--Another election, which is deemed an important one, is
+approaching, and, as I suppose, the Republican party will, without much
+difficulty, elect their State ticket. But in regard to the Legislature,
+we, the Republicans, labor under some disadvantages. In the first place,
+we have a Legislature to elect upon an apportionment of the representation
+made several years ago, when the proportion of the population was far
+greater in the South (as compared with the North) than it now is; and
+inasmuch as our opponents hold almost entire sway in the South, and we a
+correspondingly large majority in the North, the fact that we are now to
+be represented as we were years ago, when the population was different,
+is to us a very great disadvantage. We had in the year 1855, according to
+law, a census, or enumeration of the inhabitants, taken for the purpose of
+a new apportionment of representation. We know what a fair apportionment
+of representation upon that census would give us. We know that it could
+not, if fairly made, fail to give the Republican party from six to ten
+more members of the Legislature than they can probably get as the law now
+stands. It so happened at the last session of the Legislature that our
+opponents, holding the control of both branches of the Legislature,
+steadily refused to give us such an apportionment as we were rightly
+entitled to have upon the census already taken. The Legislature steadily
+refused to give us such an apportionment as we were rightfully entitled to
+have upon the census taken of the population of the State. The Legislature
+would pass no bill upon that subject, except such as was at least as
+unfair to us as the old one, and in which, in some instances, two men in
+the Democratic regions were allowed to go as far toward sending a member
+to the Legislature as three were in the Republican regions. Comparison
+was made at the time as to representative and senatorial districts, which
+completely demonstrated that such was the fact. Such a bill was passed and
+tendered to the Republican Governor for his signature; but, principally
+for the reasons I have stated, he withheld his approval, and the bill fell
+without becoming a law.
+
+Another disadvantage under which we labor is that there are one or two
+Democratic Senators who will be members of the next Legislature, and will
+vote for the election of Senator, who are holding over in districts in
+which we could, on all reasonable calculation, elect men of our own, if
+we only had the chance of an election. When we consider that there are but
+twenty-five Senators in the Senate, taking two from the side where they
+rightfully belong, and adding them to the other, is to us a disadvantage
+not to be lightly regarded. Still, so it is; we have this to contend with.
+Perhaps there is no ground of complaint on our part. In attending to the
+many things involved in the last general election for President, Governor,
+Auditor, Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Members of
+Congress, of the Legislature, County Officers, and so on, we allowed these
+things to happen by want of sufficient attention, and we have no cause to
+complain of our adversaries, so far as this matter is concerned. But
+we have some cause to complain of the refusal to give us a fair
+apportionment.
+
+There is still another disadvantage under which we labor, and to which I
+will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative positions of the
+two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate.
+Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of
+his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking
+upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of
+the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face
+post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments,
+charge-ships and foreign missions bursting and sprouting out in wonderful
+exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they
+have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the
+little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to
+give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about
+him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions
+beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have
+brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me
+to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that
+any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all, taken
+together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle
+upon principle, and upon principle alone. I am, in a certain sense, made
+the standard-bearer in behalf of the Republicans. I was made so merely
+because there had to be some one so placed,--I being in nowise preferable
+to any other one of twenty-five, perhaps a hundred, we have in the
+Republican ranks. Then I say I wish it to be distinctly understood and
+borne in mind that we have to fight this battle without many--perhaps
+without any of the external aids which are brought to bear against us.
+So I hope those with whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve
+themselves for the task, and leave nothing undone that can be fairly done
+to bring about the right result.
+
+After Senator Douglas left Washington, as his movements were made known by
+the public prints, he tarried a considerable time in the city of New
+York; and it was heralded that, like another Napoleon, he was lying by and
+framing the plan of his campaign. It was telegraphed to Washington City,
+and published in the Union, that he was framing his plan for the purpose
+of going to Illinois to pounce upon and annihilate the treasonable and
+disunion speech which Lincoln had made here on the 16th of June. Now, I
+do suppose that the Judge really spent some time in New York maturing the
+plan of the campaign, as his friends heralded for him. I have been
+able, by noting his movements since his arrival in Illinois, to discover
+evidences confirmatory of that allegation. I think I have been able to see
+what are the material points of that plan. I will, for a little while, ask
+your attention to some of them. What I shall point out, though not showing
+the whole plan, are, nevertheless, the main points, as I suppose.
+
+They are not very numerous. The first is popular sovereignty. The second
+and third are attacks upon my speech made on the 16th of June. Out of
+these three points--drawing within the range of popular sovereignty the
+question of the Lecompton Constitution--he makes his principal assault.
+Upon these his successive speeches are substantially one and the same.
+On this matter of popular sovereignty I wish to be a little careful.
+Auxiliary to these main points, to be sure, are their thunderings of
+cannon, their marching and music, their fizzlegigs and fireworks; but I
+will not waste time with them. They are but the little trappings of the
+campaign.
+
+Coming to the substance,--the first point, "popular sovereignty." It is to
+be labeled upon the cars in which he travels; put upon the hacks he rides
+in; to be flaunted upon the arches he passes under, and the banners which
+wave over him. It is to be dished up in as many varieties as a French cook
+can produce soups from potatoes. Now, as this is so great a staple of the
+plan of the campaign, it is worth while to examine it carefully; and if
+we examine only a very little, and do not allow ourselves to be misled,
+we shall be able to see that the whole thing is the most arrant Quixotism
+that was ever enacted before a community. What is the matter of popular
+sovereignty? The first thing, in order to understand it, is to get a good
+definition of what it is, and after that to see how it is applied.
+
+I suppose almost every one knows that, in this controversy, whatever has
+been said has had reference to the question of negro slavery. We have not
+been in a controversy about the right of the people to govern themselves
+in the ordinary matters of domestic concern in the States and Territories.
+Mr. Buchanan, in one of his late messages (I think when he sent up the
+Lecompton Constitution) urged that the main point to which the public
+attention had been directed was not in regard to the great variety of
+small domestic matters, but was directed to the question of negro slavery;
+and he asserts that if the people had had a fair chance to vote on that
+question there was no reasonable ground of objection in regard to minor
+questions. Now, while I think that the people had not had given, or
+offered, them a fair chance upon that slavery question, still, if
+there had been a fair submission to a vote upon that main question, the
+President's proposition would have been true to the utmost. Hence, when
+hereafter I speak of popular sovereignty, I wish to be understood as
+applying what I say to the question of slavery only, not to other minor
+domestic matters of a Territory or a State.
+
+Does Judge Douglas, when he says that several of the past years of his
+life have been devoted to the question of "popular sovereignty," and that
+all the remainder of his life shall be devoted to it, does he mean to
+say that he has been devoting his life to securing to the people of the
+Territories the right to exclude slavery from the Territories? If he means
+so to say he means to deceive; because he and every one knows that the
+decision of the Supreme Court, which he approves and makes especial ground
+of attack upon me for disapproving, forbids the people of a Territory to
+exclude slavery. This covers the whole ground, from the settlement of a
+Territory till it reaches the degree of maturity entitling it to form a
+State Constitution. So far as all that ground is concerned, the Judge
+is not sustaining popular sovereignty, but absolutely opposing it.
+He sustains the decision which declares that the popular will of the
+Territory has no constitutional power to exclude slavery during their
+territorial existence. This being so, the period of time from the first
+settlement of a Territory till it reaches the point of forming a State
+Constitution is not the thing that the Judge has fought for or is fighting
+for, but, on the contrary, he has fought for, and is fighting for, the
+thing that annihilates and crushes out that same popular sovereignty.
+
+Well, so much being disposed of, what is left? Why, he is contending for
+the right of the people, when they come to make a State Constitution,
+to make it for themselves, and precisely as best suits themselves. I say
+again, that is quixotic. I defy contradiction when I declare that the
+Judge can find no one to oppose him on that proposition. I repeat,
+there is nobody opposing that proposition on principle. Let me not be
+misunderstood. I know that, with reference to the Lecompton Constitution,
+I may be misunderstood; but when you understand me correctly, my
+proposition will be true and accurate. Nobody is opposing, or has opposed,
+the right of the people, when they form a constitution, to form it for
+themselves. Mr. Buchanan and his friends have not done it; they, too, as
+well as the Republicans and the Anti-Lecompton Democrats, have not done
+it; but on the contrary, they together have insisted on the right of the
+people to form a constitution for themselves. The difference between the
+Buchanan men on the one hand, and the Douglas men and the Republicans on
+the other, has not been on a question of principle, but on a question of
+fact.
+
+The dispute was upon the question of fact, whether the Lecompton
+Constitution had been fairly formed by the people or not. Mr. Buchanan and
+his friends have not contended for the contrary principle any more than
+the Douglas men or the Republicans. They have insisted that whatever of
+small irregularities existed in getting up the Lecompton Constitution were
+such as happen in the settlement of all new Territories. The question was,
+Was it a fair emanation of the people? It was a question of fact, and not
+of principle. As to the principle, all were agreed. Judge Douglas voted
+with the Republicans upon that matter of fact.
+
+He and they, by their voices and votes, denied that it was a fair
+emanation of the people. The Administration affirmed that it was. With
+respect to the evidence bearing upon that question of fact, I readily
+agree that Judge Douglas and the Republicans had the right on their side,
+and that the Administration was wrong. But I state again that, as a
+matter of principle, there is no dispute upon the right of a people in
+a Territory, merging into a State, to form a constitution for themselves
+without outside interference from any quarter. This being so, what is
+Judge Douglas going to spend his life for? Is he going to spend his life
+in maintaining a principle that nobody on earth opposes? Does he expect to
+stand up in majestic dignity, and go through his apotheosis and become a
+god in the maintaining of a principle which neither man nor mouse in
+all God's creation is opposing? Now something in regard to the Lecompton
+Constitution more specially; for I pass from this other question of
+popular sovereignty as the most arrant humbug that has ever been attempted
+on an intelligent community.
+
+As to the Lecompton Constitution, I have already said that on the question
+of fact, as to whether it was a fair emanation of the people or not, Judge
+Douglas, with the Republicans and some Americans, had greatly the argument
+against the Administration; and while I repeat this, I wish to know what
+there is in the opposition of Judge Douglas to the Lecompton Constitution
+that entitles him to be considered the only opponent to it,--as being
+par excellence the very quintessence of that opposition. I agree to the
+rightfulness of his opposition. He in the Senate and his class of men
+there formed the number three and no more. In the House of Representatives
+his class of men--the Anti-Lecompton Democrats--formed a number of about
+twenty. It took one hundred and twenty to defeat the measure, against one
+hundred and twelve. Of the votes of that one hundred and twenty, Judge
+Douglas's friends furnished twenty, to add to which there were six
+Americans and ninety-four Republicans. I do not say that I am precisely
+accurate in their numbers, but I am sufficiently so for any use I am
+making of it.
+
+Why is it that twenty shall be entitled to all the credit of doing that
+work, and the hundred none of it? Why, if, as Judge Douglas says, the
+honor is to be divided and due credit is to be given to other parties, why
+is just so much given as is consonant with the wishes, the interests, and
+advancement of the twenty? My understanding is, when a common job is done,
+or a common enterprise prosecuted, if I put in five dollars to your one,
+I have a right to take out five dollars to your one. But he does not so
+understand it. He declares the dividend of credit for defeating Lecompton
+upon a basis which seems unprecedented and incomprehensible.
+
+Let us see. Lecompton in the raw was defeated. It afterward took a sort
+of cooked-up shape, and was passed in the English bill. It is said by the
+Judge that the defeat was a good and proper thing. If it was a good thing,
+why is he entitled to more credit than others for the performance of that
+good act, unless there was something in the antecedents of the Republicans
+that might induce every one to expect them to join in that good work, and
+at the same time something leading them to doubt that he would? Does he
+place his superior claim to credit on the ground that he performed a
+good act which was never expected of him? He says I have a proneness for
+quoting Scripture. If I should do so now, it occurs that perhaps he places
+himself somewhat upon the ground of the parable of the lost sheep which
+went astray upon the mountains, and when the owner of the hundred sheep
+found the one that was lost, and threw it upon his shoulders and came home
+rejoicing, it was said that there was more rejoicing over the one sheep
+that was lost and had been found than over the ninety and nine in the
+fold. The application is made by the Saviour in this parable, thus:
+"Verily, I say unto you, there is more rejoicing in heaven over one
+sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no
+repentance."
+
+And now, if the Judge claims the benefit of this parable, let him repent.
+Let him not come up here and say: "I am the only just person; and you are
+the ninety-nine sinners!" Repentance before forgiveness is a provision
+of the Christian system, and on that condition alone will the Republicans
+grant his forgiveness.
+
+How will he prove that we have ever occupied a different position in
+regard to the Lecompton Constitution or any principle in it? He says he
+did not make his opposition on the ground as to whether it was a free or
+slave constitution, and he would have you understand that the Republicans
+made their opposition because it ultimately became a slave constitution.
+To make proof in favor of himself on this point, he reminds us that he
+opposed Lecompton before the vote was taken declaring whether the State
+was to be free or slave. But he forgets to say that our Republican
+Senator, Trumbull, made a speech against Lecompton even before he did.
+
+Why did he oppose it? Partly, as he declares, because the members of the
+convention who framed it were not fairly elected by the people; that the
+people were not allowed to vote unless they had been registered; and that
+the people of whole counties, some instances, were not registered. For
+these reasons he declares the Constitution was not an emanation, in any
+true sense, from the people. He also has an additional objection as to the
+mode of submitting the Constitution back to the people. But bearing on the
+question of whether the delegates were fairly elected, a speech of his,
+made something more than twelve months ago, from this stand, becomes
+important. It was made a little while before the election of the delegates
+who made Lecompton. In that speech he declared there was every reason
+to hope and believe the election would be fair; and if any one failed to
+vote, it would be his own culpable fault.
+
+I, a few days after, made a sort of answer to that speech. In that answer
+I made, substantially, the very argument with which he combated his
+Lecompton adversaries in the Senate last winter. I pointed to the facts
+that the people could not vote without being registered, and that the time
+for registering had gone by. I commented on it as wonderful that Judge
+Douglas could be ignorant of these facts which every one else in the
+nation so well knew.
+
+I now pass from popular sovereignty and Lecompton. I may have occasion to
+refer to one or both.
+
+When he was preparing his plan of campaign, Napoleon-like, in New York,
+as appears by two speeches I have heard him deliver since his arrival in
+Illinois, he gave special attention to a speech of mine, delivered here on
+the 16th of June last. He says that he carefully read that speech. He told
+us that at Chicago a week ago last night and he repeated it at Bloomington
+last night. Doubtless, he repeated it again to-day, though I did not hear
+him. In the first two places--Chicago and Bloomington I heard him; to-day
+I did not. He said he had carefully examined that speech,--when, he did
+not say; but there is no reasonable doubt it was when he was in New York
+preparing his plan of campaign. I am glad he did read it carefully. He
+says it was evidently prepared with great care. I freely admit it
+was prepared with care. I claim not to be more free from errors than
+others,--perhaps scarcely so much; but I was very careful not to put
+anything in that speech as a matter of fact, or make any inferences, which
+did not appear to me to be true and fully warrantable. If I had made any
+mistake, I was willing to be corrected; if I had drawn any inference in
+regard to Judge Douglas or any one else which was not warranted, I was
+fully prepared to modify it as soon as discovered. I planted myself upon
+the truth and the truth only, so far as I knew it, or could be brought to
+know it.
+
+Having made that speech with the most kindly feelings toward Judge
+Douglas, as manifested therein, I was gratified when I found that he
+had carefully examined it, and had detected no error of fact, nor any
+inference against him, nor any misrepresentations of which he thought fit
+to complain. In neither of the two speeches I have mentioned did he make
+any such complaint. I will thank any one who will inform me that he, in
+his speech to-day, pointed out anything I had stated respecting him as
+being erroneous. I presume there is no such thing. I have reason to be
+gratified that the care and caution used in that speech left it so that
+he, most of all others interested in discovering error, has not been able
+to point out one thing against him which he could say was wrong. He seizes
+upon the doctrines he supposes to be included in that speech, and declares
+that upon them will turn the issues of this campaign. He then quotes,
+or attempts to quote, from my speech. I will not say that he wilfully
+misquotes, but he does fail to quote accurately. His attempt at quoting is
+from a passage which I believe I can quote accurately from memory. I shall
+make the quotation now, with some comments upon it, as I have already
+said, in order that the Judge shall be left entirely without excuse for
+misrepresenting me. I do so now, as I hope, for the last time. I do this
+in great caution, in order that if he repeats his misrepresentation it
+shall be plain to all that he does so wilfully. If, after all, he still
+persists, I shall be compelled to reconstruct the course I have marked
+out for myself, and draw upon such humble resources, as I have, for a new
+course, better suited to the real exigencies of the case. I set out in
+this campaign with the intention of conducting it strictly as a gentleman,
+in substance at least, if not in the outside polish. The latter I shall
+never be; but that which constitutes the inside of a gentleman I hope I
+understand, and am not less inclined to practice than others. It was
+my purpose and expectation that this canvass would be conducted upon
+principle, and with fairness on both sides, and it shall not be my fault
+if this purpose and expectation shall be given up.
+
+He charges, in substance, that I invite a war of sections; that I
+propose all the local institutions of the different States shall become
+consolidated and uniform. What is there in the language of that speech
+which expresses such purpose or bears such construction? I have again and
+again said that I would not enter into any of the States to disturb the
+institution of slavery. Judge Douglas said, at Bloomington, that I used
+language most able and ingenious for concealing what I really meant;
+and that while I had protested against entering into the slave States, I
+nevertheless did mean to go on the banks of the Ohio and throw missiles
+into Kentucky, to disturb them in their domestic institutions.
+
+I said in that speech, and I meant no more, that the institution of
+slavery ought to be placed in the very attitude where the framers of this
+government placed it and left it. I do not understand that the framers
+of our Constitution left the people of the free States in the attitude of
+firing bombs or shells into the slave States. I was not using that passage
+for the purpose for which he infers I did use it. I said:
+
+"We are now far advanced into the fifth year since a policy was created
+for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to
+slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has
+not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will
+not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house
+divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe that this government
+cannot endure permanently half slave and half free; it will become all one
+thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the
+further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
+belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates
+will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,
+old as well as new, North as well as South."
+
+Now, you all see, from that quotation, I did not express my wish on
+anything. In that passage I indicated no wish or purpose of my own; I
+simply expressed my expectation. Cannot the Judge perceive a distinction
+between a purpose and an expectation? I have often expressed an
+expectation to die, but I have never expressed a wish to die. I said
+at Chicago, and now repeat, that I am quite aware this government has
+endured, half slave and half free, for eighty-two years. I understand
+that little bit of history. I expressed the opinion I did because I
+perceived--or thought I perceived--a new set of causes introduced. I did
+say at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of
+slavery arrested, and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest
+in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction. I said that
+because I supposed, when the public mind shall rest in that belief,
+we shall have peace on the slavery question. I have believed--and now
+believe--the public mind did rest on that belief up to the introduction of
+the Nebraska Bill.
+
+Although I have ever been opposed to slavery, so far I rested in the hope
+and belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. For that
+reason it had been a minor question with me. I might have been mistaken;
+but I had believed, and now believe, that the whole public mind, that is,
+the mind of the great majority, had rested in that belief up to the repeal
+of the Missouri Compromise. But upon that event I became convinced that
+either I had been resting in a delusion, or the institution was being
+placed on a new basis, a basis for making it perpetual, national, and
+universal. Subsequent events have greatly confirmed me in that belief. I
+believe that bill to be the beginning of a conspiracy for that purpose. So
+believing, I have since then considered that question a paramount one.
+So believing, I thought the public mind will never rest till the power
+of Congress to restrict the spread of it shall again be acknowledged and
+exercised on the one hand or, on the other, all resistance be entirely
+crushed out. I have expressed that opinion, and I entertain it to-night.
+It is denied that there is any tendency to the nationalization of slavery
+in these States.
+
+Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they were
+presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers, and the like, for
+assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his opinion that when this
+Constitution was formed it was the belief of no man that slavery would
+last to the present day. He said, what I think, that the framers of our
+Constitution placed the institution of slavery where the public mind
+rested in the hope that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But
+he went on to say that the men of the present age, by their experience,
+have become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the invention
+of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a necessity in this
+country.
+
+As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite recently in
+Virginia, a man--the owner of slaves--made a will providing that after his
+death certain of his slaves should have their freedom if they should so
+choose, and go to Liberia, rather than remain in slavery. They chose to be
+liberated. But the persons to whom they would descend as property claimed
+them as slaves. A suit was instituted, which finally came to the Supreme
+Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves upon the
+ground that a negro cannot make a choice; that they had no legal power to
+choose, could not perform the condition upon which their freedom depended.
+
+I do not mention this with any purpose of criticizing it, but to connect
+it with the arguments as affording additional evidence of the change of
+sentiment upon this question of slavery in the direction of making it
+perpetual and national. I argue now as I did before, that there is such
+a tendency; and I am backed, not merely by the facts, but by the open
+confession in the slave States.
+
+And now as to the Judge's inference that because I wish to see slavery
+placed in the course of ultimate extinction,--placed where our fathers
+originally placed it,--I wish to annihilate the State Legislatures, to
+force cotton to grow upon the tops of the Green Mountains, to freeze ice
+in Florida, to cut lumber on the broad Illinois prairie,--that I am in
+favor of all these ridiculous and impossible things.
+
+It seems to me it is a complete answer to all this to ask if, when
+Congress did have the fashion of restricting slavery from free territory;
+when courts did have the fashion of deciding that taking a slave into a
+free country made him free,--I say it is a sufficient answer to ask if
+any of this ridiculous nonsense about consolidation and uniformity did
+actually follow. Who heard of any such thing because of the Ordinance of
+'87? because of the Missouri restriction? because of the numerous court
+decisions of that character?
+
+Now, as to the Dred Scott decision; for upon that he makes his last point
+at me. He boldly takes ground in favor of that decision.
+
+This is one half the onslaught, and one third of the entire plan of the
+campaign. I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, but not in
+the sense which he puts it. I say that in so far as it decided in favor
+of Dred Scott's master, and against Dred Scott and his family, I do not
+propose to disturb or resist the decision.
+
+I never have proposed to do any such thing. I think that in respect for
+judicial authority my humble history would not suffer in comparison with
+that of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizen conform his vote to that
+decision; the member of Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto
+power. He would make it a rule of political action for the people and
+all the departments of the government. I would not. By resisting it as a
+political rule, I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite
+no mobs.
+
+When he spoke at Chicago, on Friday evening of last week, he made this
+same point upon me. On Saturday evening I replied, and reminded him of a
+Supreme Court decision which he opposed for at least several years. Last
+night, at Bloomington, he took some notice of that reply, but entirely
+forgot to remember that part of it.
+
+He renews his onslaught upon me, forgetting to remember that I have turned
+the tables against himself on that very point. I renew the effort to draw
+his attention to it. I wish to stand erect before the country, as well as
+Judge Douglas, on this question of judicial authority; and therefore I
+add something to the authority in favor of my own position. I wish to
+show that I am sustained by authority, in addition to that heretofore
+presented. I do not expect to convince the Judge. It is part of the plan
+of his campaign, and he will cling to it with a desperate grip. Even turn
+it upon him,--the sharp point against him, and gaff him through,--he will
+still cling to it till he can invent some new dodge to take the place of
+it.
+
+In public speaking it is tedious reading from documents; but I must beg
+to indulge the practice to a limited extent. I shall read from a letter
+written by Mr. Jefferson in 1820, and now to be found in the seventh
+volume of his correspondence, at page 177. It seems he had been presented
+by a gentleman of the name of Jarvis with a book, or essay, or periodical,
+called the Republican, and he was writing in acknowledgment of the
+present, and noting some of its contents. After expressing the hope that
+the work will produce a favorable effect upon the minds of the young, he
+proceeds to say:
+
+"That it will have this tendency may be expected, and for that reason I
+feel an urgency to note what I deem an error in it, the more requiring
+notice as your opinion is strengthened by that of many others. You seem,
+in pages 84 and 148, to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of
+all constitutional questions,--a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one
+which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are
+as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same
+passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their
+maxim is, 'Boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem'; and their power is
+the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as
+the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has
+erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided,
+with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
+It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign with
+themselves."
+
+Thus we see the power claimed for the Supreme Court by Judge Douglas, Mr.
+Jefferson holds, would reduce us to the despotism of an oligarchy.
+
+Now, I have said no more than this,--in fact, never quite so much as this;
+at least I am sustained by Mr. Jefferson.
+
+Let us go a little further. You remember we once had a National Bank. Some
+one owed the bank a debt; he was sued, and sought to avoid payment on the
+ground that the bank was unconstitutional. The case went to the Supreme
+Court, and therein it was decided that the bank was constitutional. The
+whole Democratic party revolted against that decision. General Jackson
+himself asserted that he, as President, would not be bound to hold a
+National Bank to be constitutional, even though the court had decided it
+to be so. He fell in precisely with the view of Mr. Jefferson, and acted
+upon it under his official oath, in vetoing a charter for a National Bank.
+The declaration that Congress does not possess this constitutional power
+to charter a bank has gone into the Democratic platform, at their
+National Conventions, and was brought forward and reaffirmed in their last
+Convention at Cincinnati. They have contended for that declaration, in the
+very teeth of the Supreme Court, for more than a quarter of a century.
+In fact, they have reduced the decision to an absolute nullity. That
+decision, I repeat, is repudiated in the Cincinnati platform; and still,
+as if to show that effrontery can go no further, Judge Douglas vaunts in
+the very speeches in which he denounces me for opposing the Dred Scott
+decision that he stands on the Cincinnati platform.
+
+Now, I wish to know what the Judge can charge upon me, with respect to
+decisions of the Supreme Court, which does not lie in all its length,
+breadth, and proportions at his own door. The plain truth is simply this:
+Judge Douglas is for Supreme Court decisions when he likes and against
+them when he does not like them. He is for the Dred Scott decision because
+it tends to nationalize slavery; because it is part of the original
+combination for that object. It so happens, singularly enough, that I
+never stood opposed to a decision of the Supreme Court till this, on the
+contrary, I have no recollection that he was ever particularly in favor of
+one till this. He never was in favor of any nor opposed to any, till the
+present one, which helps to nationalize slavery.
+
+Free men of Sangamon, free men of Illinois, free men everywhere, judge ye
+between him and me upon this issue.
+
+He says this Dred Scott case is a very small matter at most,--that it has
+no practical effect; that at best, or rather, I suppose, at worst, it is
+but an abstraction. I submit that the proposition that the thing which
+determines whether a man is free or a slave is rather concrete than
+abstract. I think you would conclude that it was, if your liberty depended
+upon it, and so would Judge Douglas, if his liberty depended upon it.
+But suppose it was on the question of spreading slavery over the new
+Territories that he considers it as being merely an abstract matter, and
+one of no practical importance. How has the planting of slavery in new
+countries always been effected? It has now been decided that slavery
+cannot be kept out of our new Territories by any legal means. In what do
+our new Territories now differ in this respect from the old Colonies when
+slavery was first planted within them? It was planted, as Mr. Clay once
+declared, and as history proves true, by individual men, in spite of the
+wishes of the people; the Mother Government refusing to prohibit it, and
+withholding from the people of the Colonies the authority to prohibit it
+for themselves. Mr. Clay says this was one of the great and just causes of
+complaint against Great Britain by the Colonies, and the best apology
+we can now make for having the institution amongst us. In that precise
+condition our Nebraska politicians have at last succeeded in placing our
+own new Territories; the government will not prohibit slavery within them,
+nor allow the people to prohibit it.
+
+I defy any man to find any difference between the policy which originally
+planted slavery in these Colonies and that policy which now prevails in
+our new Territories. If it does not go into them, it is only because no
+individual wishes it to go. The Judge indulged himself doubtless to-day
+with the question as to what I am going to do with or about the Dred Scott
+decision. Well, Judge, will you please tell me what you did about the
+bank decision? Will you not graciously allow us to do with the Dred Scott
+decision precisely as you did with the bank decision? You succeeded in
+breaking down the moral effect of that decision: did you find it necessary
+to amend the Constitution, or to set up a court of negroes in order to do
+it?
+
+There is one other point. Judge Douglas has a very affectionate leaning
+toward the Americans and Old Whigs. Last evening, in a sort of weeping
+tone, he described to us a death-bed scene. He had been called to the side
+of Mr. Clay, in his last moments, in order that the genius of "popular
+sovereignty" might duly descend from the dying man and settle upon him,
+the living and most worthy successor. He could do no less than promise
+that he would devote the remainder of his life to "popular sovereignty";
+and then the great statesman departs in peace. By this part of the "plan
+of the campaign" the Judge has evidently promised himself that tears shall
+be drawn down the cheeks of all Old Whigs, as large as half-grown apples.
+
+Mr. Webster, too, was mentioned; but it did not quite come to a death-bed
+scene as to him. It would be amusing, if it were not disgusting, to see
+how quick these compromise-breakers administer on the political effects
+of their dead adversaries, trumping up claims never before heard of, and
+dividing the assets among themselves. If I should be found dead to-morrow
+morning, nothing but my insignificance could prevent a speech being made
+on my authority, before the end of next week. It so happens that in that
+"popular sovereignty" with which Mr. Clay was identified, the Missouri
+Compromise was expressly reversed; and it was a little singular if Mr.
+Clay cast his mantle upon Judge Douglas on purpose to have that compromise
+repealed.
+
+Again, the Judge did not keep faith with Mr. Clay when he first brought in
+his Nebraska Bill. He left the Missouri Compromise unrepealed, and in his
+report accompanying the bill he told the world he did it on purpose. The
+manes of Mr. Clay must have been in great agony till thirty days later,
+when "popular sovereignty" stood forth in all its glory.
+
+One more thing. Last night Judge Douglas tormented himself with horrors
+about my disposition to make negroes perfectly equal with white men in
+social and political relations. He did not stop to show that I have said
+any such thing, or that it legitimately follows from anything I have
+said, but he rushes on with his assertions. I adhere to the Declaration of
+Independence. If Judge Douglas and his friends are not willing to stand by
+it, let them come up and amend it. Let them make it read that all men
+are created equal except negroes. Let us have it decided whether the
+Declaration of Independence, in this blessed year of 1858, shall be thus
+amended. In his construction of the Declaration last year, he said it only
+meant that Americans in America were equal to Englishmen in England. Then,
+when I pointed out to him that by that rule he excludes the Germans, the
+Irish, the Portuguese, and all the other people who have come among us
+since the revolution, he reconstructs his construction. In his last speech
+he tells us it meant Europeans.
+
+I press him a little further, and ask if it meant to include the Russians
+in Asia; or does he mean to exclude that vast population from the
+principles of our Declaration of Independence? I expect ere long he
+will introduce another amendment to his definition. He is not at all
+particular. He is satisfied with anything which does not endanger the
+nationalizing of negro slavery. It may draw white men down, but it must
+not lift negroes up.
+
+Who shall say, "I am the superior, and you are the inferior"?
+
+My declarations upon this subject of negro slavery may be misrepresented,
+but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the
+Declaration to mean that all men were created equal in all respects. They
+are not our equal in color; but I suppose that it does mean to declare
+that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal in their right to
+"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Certainly the negro is
+not our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the
+right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he
+is the equal of every other man, white or black. In pointing out that
+more has been given you, you cannot be justified in taking away the little
+which has been given him. All I ask for the negro is that if you do not
+like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him
+enjoy.
+
+When our government was established we had the institution of slavery
+among us. We were in a certain sense compelled to tolerate its existence.
+It was a sort of necessity. We had gone through our struggle and
+secured our own independence. The framers of the Constitution found the
+institution of slavery amongst their own institutions at the time. They
+found that by an effort to eradicate it they might lose much of what they
+had already gained. They were obliged to bow to the necessity. They gave
+power to Congress to abolish the slave trade at the end of twenty years.
+They also prohibited it in the Territories where it did not exist. They
+did what they could, and yielded to the necessity for the rest. I also
+yield to all which follows from that necessity. What I would most desire
+would be the separation of the white and black races.
+
+One more point on this Springfield speech which Judge Douglas says he has
+read so carefully. I expressed my belief in the existence of a conspiracy
+to perpetuate and nationalize slavery. I did not profess to know it, nor
+do I now. I showed the part Judge Douglas had played in the string of
+facts constituting to my mind the proof of that conspiracy. I showed the
+parts played by others.
+
+I charged that the people had been deceived into carrying the last
+Presidential election, by the impression that the people of the
+Territories might exclude slavery if they chose, when it was known in
+advance by the conspirators that the court was to decide that neither
+Congress nor the people could so exclude slavery. These charges are more
+distinctly made than anything else in the speech.
+
+Judge Douglas has carefully read and reread that speech. He has not, so
+far as I know, contradicted those charges. In the two speeches which I
+heard he certainly did not. On this own tacit admission, I renew that
+charge. I charge him with having been a party to that conspiracy and to
+that deception for the sole purpose of nationalizing slavery.
+
+
+
+
+CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS
+
+[The following is the correspondence between the two rival candidates for
+the United States Senate]
+
+
+
+
+MR. LINCOLN TO MR. DOUGLAS.
+
+CHICAGO, ILL., July 24, 1558.
+
+HON. S. A. DOUGLAS:
+
+My dear Sir,--Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you
+and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences the present
+canvass? Mr. Judd, who will hand you this, is authorized to receive
+your answer; and, if agreeable to you, to enter into the terms of such
+arrangement.
+
+Your obedient servant,
+
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. DOUGLAS TO Mr. LINCOLN.
+
+BEMENT, PLATT Co., ILL., July 30, 1858.
+
+Dear Sir,--Your letter dated yesterday, accepting my proposition for a
+joint discussion at one prominent point in each Congressional District, as
+stated in my previous letter, was received this morning.
+
+The times and places designated are as follows:
+
+    Ottawa, La Salle County   August  21st, 1858.
+    Freeport, Stephenson County  "    27th,
+    Jonesboro, Union County, September 15th,
+    Charleston, Coles County   "  18th,
+    Galesburgh, Knox County October 7th,
+    Quincy, Adams County    " 13th,
+    Alton, Madison County    " 15th,
+
+I agree to your suggestion that we shall alternately open and close the
+discussion. I will speak at Ottawa one hour, you can reply, occupying an
+hour and a half, and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport, you
+shall open the discussion and speak one hour; I will follow for an hour
+and a half, and you can then reply for half an hour. We will alternate in
+like manner in each successive place.
+
+Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
+
+S. A. DOUGLAS.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. LINCOLN TO Mr. DOUGLAS.
+
+SPRINGFIELD, July 31, 1858. HON. S. A. DOUGLAS:
+
+Dear Sir,--Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms for joint
+discussions between us, was received this morning. Although, by the terms,
+as you propose, you take four openings and closes, to my three, I accede,
+and thus close the arrangement. I direct this to you at Hillsborough,
+and shall try to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and
+Register of Monday morning.
+
+Your obedient servant,
+
+A. LINCOLN.
+
+
+
+
+FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA,
+
+AUGUST 21, 1858
+
+Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY
+
+MY FELLOW-CITIZENS:--When a man hears himself somewhat misrepresented,
+it provokes him, at least, I find it so with myself; but when
+misrepresentation becomes very gross and palpable, it is more apt to amuse
+him. The first thing I see fit to notice is the fact that Judge Douglas
+alleges, after running through the history of the old Democratic and the
+old Whig parties, that Judge Trumbull and myself made an arrangement in
+1854, by which I was to have the place of General Shields in the United
+States Senate, and Judge Trumbull was to have the place of Judge Douglas.
+Now, all I have to say upon that subject is that I think no man not even
+Judge Douglas can prove it, because it is not true. I have no doubt he is
+"conscientious" in saying it. As to those resolutions that he took such a
+length of time to read, as being the platform of the Republican party in
+1854, I say I never had anything to do with them, and I think Trumbull
+never had. Judge Douglas cannot show that either of us ever did have
+anything to do with them.
+
+I believe this is true about those resolutions: There was a call for a
+convention to form a Republican party at Springfield, and I think that my
+friend Mr. Lovejoy, who is here upon this stand, had a hand in it. I think
+this is true, and I think if he will remember accurately he will be able
+to recollect that he tried to get me into it, and I would not go in.
+I believe it is also true that I went away from Springfield when the
+convention was in session, to attend court in Tazewell county. It is true
+they did place my name, though without authority, upon the committee, and
+afterward wrote me to attend the meeting of the committee; but I refused
+to do so, and I never had anything to do with that organization. This is
+the plain truth about all that matter of the resolutions.
+
+Now, about this story that Judge Douglas tells of Trumbull bargaining to
+sell out the old Democratic party, and Lincoln agreeing to sell out the
+old Whig party, I have the means of knowing about that: Judge Douglas
+cannot have; and I know there is no substance to it whatever. Yet I have
+no doubt he is "conscientious" about it. I know that after Mr. Lovejoy got
+into the Legislature that winter, he complained of me that I had told all
+the old Whigs of his district that the old Whig party was good enough for
+them, and some of them voted against him because I told them so. Now, I
+have no means of totally disproving such charges as this which the Judge
+makes. A man cannot prove a negative; but he has a right to claim that
+when a man makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof to show
+the truth of what he says. I certainly cannot introduce testimony to show
+the negative about things, but I have a right to claim that if a man says
+he knows a thing, then he must show how he knows it. I always have a
+right to claim this, and it is not satisfactory to me that he may be
+"conscientious" on the subject.
+
+Now, gentlemen, I hate to waste my time on such things; but in regard to
+that general Abolition tilt that Judge Douglas makes, when he says that
+I was engaged at that time in selling out and Abolitionizing the old Whig
+party, I hope you will permit me to read a part of a printed speech that
+I made then at Peoria, which will show altogether a different view of the
+position I took in that contest of 1854.
+
+[Voice: "Put on your specs."]
+
+Mr. LINCOLN: Yes, sir, I am obliged to do so; I am no longer a young man.
+
+"This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The foregoing history
+may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I am sure it is
+sufficiently so for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in
+it we have before us the chief materials enabling us to correctly judge
+whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.
+
+"I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong--wrong in its direct
+effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its
+prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the
+wide world where men can be found inclined to take it.
+
+"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal
+for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
+monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives
+our republican example of its just influence in the world,--enables
+the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as
+hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,
+and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves
+into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
+criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is
+no right principle of action but self-interest.
+
+"Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the
+Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If
+slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it
+did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe
+of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals on both
+sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who
+would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know
+that some Southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top
+Abolitionists; while some Northern ones go south and become most cruel
+slave-masters.
+
+"When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin
+of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the
+institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any
+satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I will not
+blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If
+all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the
+existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and
+send them to Liberia,--to their own native land. But a moment's reflection
+would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there
+may be in this in the long term, its sudden execution is impossible. If
+they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten
+days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the
+world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them
+all and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this
+betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any
+rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon.
+What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals?
+My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know
+that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this
+feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question,
+if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill
+founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals.
+It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted;
+but for their tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren
+of the South.
+
+"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge
+them, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them any
+legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in
+its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than Our
+ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.
+
+"But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for permitting
+slavery to go into our own free territory than it would for reviving the
+African slave-trade by law. The law which forbids the bringing of slaves
+from Africa, and that which has so long forbid the taking of them to
+Nebraska, can hardly be distinguished on any moral principle; and the
+repeal of the former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
+latter."
+
+I have reason to know that Judge Douglas knows that I said this. I think
+he has the answer here to one of the questions he put to me. I do not mean
+to allow him to catechize me unless he pays back for it in kind. I will
+not answer questions one after another, unless he reciprocates; but as
+he has made this inquiry, and I have answered it before, he has got
+it without my getting anything in return. He has got my answer on the
+Fugitive Slave law.
+
+Now, gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length; but this is
+the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution
+of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it; and anything that
+argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the
+negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man
+can prove a horse-chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while
+upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
+interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.
+I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
+so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between
+the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between
+the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living
+together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes
+a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas,
+am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I
+have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding
+all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to
+all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the
+right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as
+much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he
+is not my equal in many respects, certainly not in color, perhaps not
+in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread,
+without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my
+equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
+
+Now I pass on to consider one or two more of these little follies.
+The Judge is woefully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a
+"grocery-keeper." I don't know as it would be a great sin, if I had been;
+but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.
+It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one winter in a little
+stillhouse, up at the head of a hollow. And so I think my friend the Judge
+is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress
+of having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war. The
+Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he
+can prove, by referring to the record. You remember I was an old Whig,
+and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had
+been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever
+they asked for any money, or landwarrants, or anything to pay the soldiers
+there, during all that time, I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did.
+You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the
+truth, and the Judge has the right to make all he can out of it. But when
+he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from
+the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else
+to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether
+mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.
+
+As I have not used up so much of my time as I had supposed, I will dwell
+a little longer upon one or two of these minor topics upon which the Judge
+has spoken. He has read from my speech in Springfield, in which I say that
+"a house divided against itself cannot stand" Does the Judge say it can
+stand? I don't know whether he does or not. The Judge does not seem to be
+attending to me just now, but I would like to know if it is his opinion
+that a house divided against itself can stand. If he does, then there is a
+question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an
+Authority of a somewhat higher character.
+
+Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of
+saying something seriously. I know that the Judge may readily enough agree
+with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Savior is true, but he
+may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right to urge that, in
+my application, I do misapply it, and then I have a right to show that I
+do not misapply it, When he undertakes to say that because I think this
+nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will all become
+one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing about a dead
+uniformity in the various States, in all their institutions, he argues
+erroneously. The great variety of the local institutions in the States,
+springing from differences in the soil, differences in the face of the
+country, and in the climate, are bonds of Union. They do not make "a house
+divided against itself," but they make a house united. If they produce
+in one section of the country what is called for, by the wants of another
+section, and this other section can supply the wants of the first, they
+are not matters of discord, but bonds of union, true bonds of union. But
+can this question of slavery be considered as among these varieties in
+the institutions of the country? I leave it to you to say whether, in
+the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always
+failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of
+discord and an element of division in the house. I ask you to consider
+whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's minds shall continue
+to be the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink into the
+grave, and another race shall arise, with the same moral and intellectual
+development we have, whether, if that institution is standing in the same
+irritating position in which it now is, it will not continue an element
+of division? If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this
+question, the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge
+reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery
+has existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in
+some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at the
+position in which our fathers originally placed it--restricting it from
+the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off
+its source by the abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal
+of legislation against its spread. The public mind did rest in the belief
+that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately, I think--and
+in this I charge nothing on the Judge's motives--lately, I think that he,
+and those acting with him, have placed that institution on a new basis,
+which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. And while it
+is placed upon this new basis, I say, and I have said, that I believe
+we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery
+arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall
+rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or,
+on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall
+become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well
+as South. Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread, and place it where
+Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course
+of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would, as for eighty years
+past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis
+would be past, and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years,
+if it should live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be
+going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white
+races.
+
+[A voice: "Then do you repudiate popular sovereignty?"]
+
+Well, then, let us talk about popular sovereignty! what is popular
+sovereignty? Is it the right of the people to have slavery or not have it,
+as they see fit, in the Territories? I will state--and I have an able man
+to watch me--my understanding is that popular sovereignty, as now applied
+to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have
+slavery if they want to, but does not allow them not to have it if they do
+not want it. I do not mean that if this vast concourse of people were in a
+Territory of the United States, any one of them would be obliged to have a
+slave if he did not want one; but I do say that, as I understand the Dred
+Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of
+keeping that one man from holding them.
+
+When I made my speech at Springfield, of which the Judge complains, and
+from which he quotes, I really was not thinking of the things which he
+ascribes to me at all. I had no thought in the world that I was doing
+anything to bring about a war between the free and slave states. I had no
+thought in the world that I was doing anything to bring about a political
+and social equality of the black and white races. It never occurred to
+me that I was doing anything or favoring anything to reduce to a dead
+uniformity all the local institutions of the various States. But I must
+say, in all fairness to him, if he thinks I am doing something which leads
+to these bad results, it is none the better that I did not mean it. It
+is just as fatal to the country, if I have any influence in producing
+it, whether I intend it or not. But can it be true that placing this
+institution upon the original basis--the basis upon which our fathers
+placed it--can have any tendency to set the Northern and the Southern
+States at war with one another, or that it can have any tendency to
+make the people of Vermont raise sugar-cane, because they raise it in
+Louisiana, or that it can compel the people of Illinois to cut pine logs
+on the Grand Prairie, where they will not grow, because they cut pine
+logs in Maine, where they do grow? The Judge says this is a new principle
+started in regard to this question. Does the Judge claim that he is
+working on the plan of the founders of government? I think he says in some
+of his speeches indeed, I have one here now--that he saw evidence of a
+policy to allow slavery to be south of a certain line, while north of
+it it should be excluded, and he saw an indisposition on the part of the
+country to stand upon that policy, and therefore he set about studying the
+subject upon original principles, and upon original principles he got
+up the Nebraska Bill! I am fighting it upon these "original principles,"
+fighting it in the Jeffersonian, Washingtonian, and Madisonian fashion.
+
+Now, my friends, I wish you to attend for a little while to one or two
+other things in that Springfield speech. My main object was to show, so
+far as my humble ability was capable of showing, to the people of this
+country what I believed was the truth,--that there was a tendency, if not
+a conspiracy, among those who have engineered this slavery question for
+the last four or five years, to make slavery perpetual and universal in
+this nation. Having made that speech principally for that object, after
+arranging the evidences that I thought tended to prove my proposition, I
+concluded with this bit of comment:
+
+"We cannot absolutely know that these exact adaptations are the result of
+preconcert; but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of
+which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by
+different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,--and
+when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the
+frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting,
+and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
+adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too
+few,--not omitting even the scaffolding,--or if a single piece be lacking,
+we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring
+such piece in,--in such a case we feel it impossible not to believe that
+Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from
+the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the
+first blow was struck."
+
+When my friend Judge Douglas came to Chicago on the 9th of July, this
+speech having been delivered on the 16th of June, he made an harangue
+there, in which he took hold of this speech of mine, showing that he had
+carefully read it; and while he paid no attention to this matter at all,
+but complimented me as being a "kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman,"
+notwithstanding I had said this, he goes on and eliminates, or draws out,
+from my speech this tendency of mine to set the States at war with one
+another, to make all the institutions uniform, and set the niggers and
+white people to marrying together. Then, as the Judge had complimented me
+with these pleasant titles (I must confess to my weakness), I was a little
+"taken," for it came from a great man. I was not very much accustomed to
+flattery, and it came the sweeter to me. I was rather like the Hoosier,
+with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better than any
+other man, and got less of it. As the Judge had so flattered me, I could
+not make up my mind that he meant to deal unfairly with me; so I went to
+work to show him that he misunderstood the whole scope of my speech, and
+that I really never intended to set the people at war with one another. As
+an illustration, the next time I met him, which was at Springfield, I used
+this expression, that I claimed no right under the Constitution, nor had
+I any inclination, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the
+institutions of slavery. He says upon that: Lincoln will not enter into
+the slave States, but will go to the banks of the Ohio, on this side,
+and shoot over! He runs on, step by step, in the horse-chestnut style of
+argument, until in the Springfield speech he says: "Unless he shall
+be successful in firing his batteries until he shall have extinguished
+slavery in all the States the Union shall be dissolved." Now, I don't
+think that was exactly the way to treat "a kind, amiable, intelligent
+gentleman." I know if I had asked the Judge to show when or where it was
+I had said that, if I didn't succeed in firing into the slave States until
+slavery should be extinguished, the Union should be dissolved, he could
+not have shown it. I understand what he would do. He would say: I don't
+mean to quote from you, but this was the result of what you say. But I
+have the right to ask, and I do ask now, Did you not put it in such a form
+that an ordinary reader or listener would take it as an expression from
+me?
+
+In a speech at Springfield, on the night of the 17th, I thought I might as
+well attend to my own business a little, and I recalled his attention as
+well as I could to this charge of conspiracy to nationalize slavery. I
+called his attention to the fact that he had acknowledged in my hearing
+twice that he had carefully read the speech, and, in the language of the
+lawyers, as he had twice read the speech, and still had put in no plea
+or answer, I took a default on him. I insisted that I had a right then
+to renew that charge of conspiracy. Ten days afterward I met the Judge
+at Clinton,--that is to say, I was on the ground, but not in the
+discussion,--and heard him make a speech. Then he comes in with his plea
+to this charge, for the first time; and his plea when put in, as well as I
+can recollect it, amounted to this: that he never had any talk with Judge
+Taney or the President of the United States with regard to the Dred Scott
+decision before it was made. I (Lincoln) ought to know that the man who
+makes a charge without knowing it to be true falsifies as much as he who
+knowingly tells a falsehood; and, lastly, that he would pronounce the
+whole thing a falsehood; but, he would make no personal application of
+the charge of falsehood, not because of any regard for the "kind, amiable,
+intelligent gentleman," but because of his own personal self-respect! I
+have understood since then (but [turning to Judge Douglas] will not hold
+the Judge to it if he is not willing) that he has broken through the
+"self-respect," and has got to saying the thing out. The Judge nods to me
+that it is so. It is fortunate for me that I can keep as good-humored as I
+do, when the Judge acknowledges that he has been trying to make a question
+of veracity with me. I know the Judge is a great man, while I am only a
+small man, but I feel that I have got him. I demur to that plea. I waive
+all objections that it was not filed till after default was taken, and
+demur to it upon the merits. What if Judge Douglas never did talk with
+Chief Justice Taney and the President before the Dred Scott decision
+was made, does it follow that he could not have had as perfect an
+understanding without talking as with it? I am not disposed to stand upon
+my legal advantage. I am disposed to take his denial as being like an
+answer in chancery, that he neither had any knowledge, information, or
+belief in the existence of such a conspiracy. I am disposed to take his
+answer as being as broad as though he had put it in these words. And now,
+I ask, even if he had done so, have not I a right to prove it on him, and
+to offer the evidence of more than two witnesses, by whom to prove it; and
+if the evidence proves the existence of the conspiracy, does his broader
+answer denying all knowledge, information, or belief, disturb the fact?
+It can only show that he was used by conspirators, and was not a leader of
+them.
+
+Now, in regard to his reminding me of the moral rule that persons who tell
+what they do not know to be true falsify as much as those who knowingly
+tell falsehoods. I remember the rule, and it must be borne in mind that
+in what I have read to you, I do not say that I know such a conspiracy
+to exist. To that I reply, I believe it. If the Judge says that I do not
+believe it, then he says what he does not know, and falls within his
+own rule, that he who asserts a thing which he does not know to be true,
+falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood. I want to call
+your attention to a little discussion on that branch of the case, and the
+evidence which brought my mind to the conclusion which I expressed as
+my belief. If, in arraying that evidence I had stated anything which was
+false or erroneous, it needed but that Judge Douglas should point it out,
+and I would have taken it back, with all the kindness in the world. I do
+not deal in that way. If I have brought forward anything not a fact, if he
+will point it out, it will not even ruffle me to take it back. But if he
+will not point out anything erroneous in the evidence, is it not rather
+for him to show, by a comparison of the evidence, that I have reasoned
+falsely, than to call the "kind, amiable, intelligent gentleman" a liar?
+If I have reasoned to a false conclusion, it is the vocation of an
+able debater to show by argument that I have wandered to an erroneous
+conclusion. I want to ask your attention to a portion of the Nebraska
+Bill, which Judge Douglas has quoted:
+
+ "It being the true intent and meaning of this Act, not to
+legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
+therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
+regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the
+Constitution of the United States."
+
+Thereupon Judge Douglas and others began to argue in favor of "popular
+sovereignty," the right of the people to have slaves if they wanted
+them, and to exclude slavery if they did not want them. "But," said,
+in substance, a Senator from Ohio (Mr. Chase, I believe), "we more than
+suspect that you do not mean to allow the people to exclude slavery if
+they wish to; and if you do mean it, accept an amendment which I propose,
+expressly authorizing the people to exclude slavery."
+
+I believe I have the amendment here before me, which was offered, and
+under which the people of the Territory, through their representatives,
+might, if they saw fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein. And now
+I state it as a fact, to be taken back if there is any mistake about it,
+that Judge Douglas and those acting with him voted that amendment down. I
+now think that those men who voted it down had a real reason for doing
+so. They know what that reason was. It looks to us, since we have seen the
+Dred Scott decision pronounced, holding that "under the Constitution" the
+people cannot exclude slavery, I say it looks to outsiders, poor, simple,
+"amiable, intelligent gentlemen," as though the niche was left as a place
+to put that Dred Scott decision in,--a niche which would have been spoiled
+by adopting the amendment. And now, I say again, if this was not the
+reason, it will avail the Judge much more to calmly and good-humoredly
+point out to these people what that other reason was for voting the
+amendment down, than, swelling himself up, to vociferate that he may be
+provoked to call somebody a liar.
+
+Again: There is in that same quotation from the Nebraska Bill this clause:
+"It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to legislate
+slavery into any Territory or State." I have always been puzzled to know
+what business the word "State" had in that connection. Judge Douglas
+knows. He put it there. He knows what he put it there for. We outsiders
+cannot say what he put it there for. The law they were passing was not
+about States, and was not making provisions for States. What was it placed
+there for? After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the
+people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott
+decision shall come, holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we
+shall discover that when the word was originally put there, it was in view
+of something which was to come in due time, we shall see that it was the
+other half of something. I now say again, if there is any different
+reason for putting it there, Judge Douglas, in a good-humored way, without
+calling anybody a liar, can tell what the reason was.
+
+When the Judge spoke at Clinton, he came very near making a charge of
+falsehood against me. He used, as I found it printed in a newspaper,
+which, I remember, was very nearly like the real speech, the following
+language:
+
+"I did not answer the charge [of conspiracy] before, for the reason that
+I did not suppose there was a man in America with a heart so corrupt as
+to believe such a charge could be true. I have too much respect for Mr.
+Lincoln to suppose he is serious in making the charge."
+
+I confess this is rather a curious view, that out of respect for me he
+should consider I was making what I deemed rather a grave charge in fun.
+I confess it strikes me rather strangely. But I let it pass. As the Judge
+did not for a moment believe that there was a man in America whose heart
+was so "corrupt" as to make such a charge, and as he places me among the
+"men in America" who have hearts base enough to make such a charge, I hope
+he will excuse me if I hunt out another charge very like this; and if it
+should turn out that in hunting I should find that other, and it
+should turn out to be Judge Douglas himself who made it, I hope he will
+reconsider this question of the deep corruption of heart he has thought
+fit to ascribe to me. In Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858, which I
+hold in my hand, he says:
+
+"In this connection there is another topic to which I desire to allude.
+I seldom refer to the course of newspapers, or notice the articles which
+they publish in regard to myself; but the course of the Washington Union
+has been so extraordinary for the last two or three months, that I think
+it well enough to make some allusion to it. It has read me out of the
+Democratic party every other day, at least for two or three months, and
+keeps reading me out, and, as if it had not succeeded, still continues to
+read me out, using such terms as 'traitor,' 'renegade,' 'deserter,' and
+other kind and polite epithets of that nature. Sir, I have no vindication
+to make of my Democracy against the Washington Union, or any other
+newspapers. I am willing to allow my history and action for the last
+twenty years to speak for themselves as to my political principles and
+my fidelity to political obligations. The Washington Union has a personal
+grievance. When its editor was nominated for public printer, I declined
+to vote for him, and stated that at some time I might give my reasons for
+doing so. Since I declined to give that vote, this scurrilous abuse, these
+vindictive and constant attacks have been repeated almost daily on me.
+Will any friend from Michigan read the article to which I allude?"
+
+This is a part of the speech. You must excuse me from reading the entire
+article of the Washington Union, as Mr. Stuart read it for Mr. Douglas.
+The Judge goes on and sums up, as I think, correctly:
+
+"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
+advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently
+authoritatively; and any man who questions any of them is denounced as an
+Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first, that
+the primary object of all government at its original institution is the
+protection of person and property; second, that the Constitution of the
+United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be entitled
+to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States;
+and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic or
+otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in
+another with their slave property, and especially declaring it forfeited,
+are direct violations of the original intention of the government and
+Constitution of the United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of
+the slaves of the Northern States was a gross outrage of the rights of
+property, inasmuch as it was involuntarily done on the part of the owner.
+
+"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the 17th of
+November, and on the 18th appeared the first article giving the adhesion
+of the Union, to the Lecompton Constitution. It was in these words:
+
+"KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled. The problem
+is saved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to
+Kansas affairs is over and gone..."
+
+And a column nearly of the same sort. Then, when you come to look into
+the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine incorporated in it
+which was put forth editorially in the Union. What is it?
+
+"ARTICLE 7, Section I. The right of property is before and higher than
+any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such
+slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the
+owner of any property whatever."
+
+Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be amended
+after 1864 by a two-thirds vote:
+
+"But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property in the
+ownership of slaves."
+
+"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they
+are identical in spirit with the authoritative article in the Washington
+Union of the day previous to its indorsement of this Constitution."
+
+I pass over some portions of the speech, and I hope that any one who feels
+interested in this matter will read the entire section of the speech, and
+see whether I do the Judge injustice. He proceeds:
+
+"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by
+the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 10th of November,
+and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that a State
+has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a
+fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."
+
+I stop the quotation there, again requesting that it may all be read. I
+have read all of the portion I desire to comment upon. What is this charge
+that the Judge thinks I must have a very corrupt heart to make? It was a
+purpose on the part of certain high functionaries to make it impossible
+for the people of one State to prohibit the people of any other State from
+entering it with their "property," so called, and making it a slave State.
+In other words, it was a charge implying a design to make the institution
+of slavery national. And now I ask your attention to what Judge Douglas
+has himself done here. I know he made that part of the speech as a reason
+why he had refused to vote for a certain man for public printer; but when
+we get at it, the charge itself is the very one I made against him, that
+he thinks I am so corrupt for uttering. Now, whom does he make that charge
+against? Does he make it against that newspaper editor merely? No; he
+says it is identical in spirit with the Lecompton Constitution, and so
+the framers of that Constitution are brought in with the editor of
+the newspaper in that "fatal blow being struck." He did not call it a
+"conspiracy." In his language, it is a "fatal blow being struck." And if
+the words carry the meaning better when changed from a "conspiracy" into a
+"fatal blow being struck," I will change my expression, and call it "fatal
+blow being struck." We see the charge made not merely against the editor
+of the Union, but all the framers of the Lecompton Constitution; and not
+only so, but the article was an authoritative article. By whose authority?
+Is there any question but he means it was by the authority of the
+President and his Cabinet,--the Administration?
+
+Is there any sort of question but he means to make that charge? Then there
+are the editors of the Union, the framers of the Lecompton Constitution,
+the President of the United States and his Cabinet, and all the supporters
+of the Lecompton Constitution, in Congress and out of Congress, who
+are all involved in this "fatal blow being struck." I commend to Judge
+Douglas's consideration the question of how corrupt a man's heart must be
+to make such a charge!
+
+Now, my friends, I have but one branch of the subject, in the little time
+I have left, to which to call your attention; and as I shall come to a
+close at the end of that branch, it is probable that I shall not occupy
+quite all the time allotted to me. Although on these questions I would
+like to talk twice as long as I have, I could not enter upon another head
+and discuss it properly without running over my time. I ask the attention
+of the people here assembled and elsewhere to the course that Judge
+Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making
+slavery national. Not going back to the records, but taking the speeches
+he makes, the speeches he made yesterday and day before, and makes
+constantly all over the country, I ask your attention to them. In the
+first place, what is necessary to make the institution national? Not
+war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their
+muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into
+Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going
+over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the
+nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision.
+It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the
+Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under
+the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do
+it. When that is decided and acquiesced in, the whole thing is done. This
+being true, and this being the way, as I think, that slavery is to be made
+national, let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that
+end. In the first place, let us see what influence he is exerting on
+public sentiment. In this and like communities, public sentiment is
+everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing
+can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper
+than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes
+and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. This must be borne
+in mind, as also the additional fact that Judge Douglas is a man of vast
+influence, so great that it is enough for many men to profess to believe
+anything when they once find out Judge Douglas professes to believe it.
+Consider also the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party,--a
+party which he claims has a majority of all the voters in the country.
+This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory
+from excluding slavery, and he does so, not because he says it is right
+in itself,--he does not give any opinion on that,--but because it has been
+decided by the court; and being decided by the court, he is, and you are,
+bound to take it in your political action as law, not that he judges at
+all of its merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a "Thus
+saith the Lord." He places it on that ground alone; and you will bear in
+mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision commits
+him to the next one just as firmly as to this. He did not commit himself
+on account of the merit or demerit of the decision, but it is a "Thus
+saith the Lord." The next decision, as much as this, will be a "Thus saith
+the Lord." There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this
+decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype,
+General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is
+nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. I have said that I have
+often heard him approve of Jackson's course in disregarding the decision
+of the Supreme Court pronouncing a National Bank constitutional. He says I
+did not hear him say so. He denies the accuracy of my recollection. I say
+he ought to know better than I, but I will make no question about this
+thing, though it still seems to me that I heard him say it twenty times.
+I will tell him, though, that he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati
+platform, which affirms that Congress cannot charter a National Bank, in
+the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank.
+And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect
+for judicial decisions, and it is a piece of Illinois history belonging
+to a time when the large party to which Judge Douglas belonged were
+displeased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they
+had decided that a Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. You
+will find the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois, and I know that
+Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of over-slaughing
+that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, so as to vote down
+the four old ones. Not only so, but it ended in the Judge's sitting down
+on that very bench as one of the five new judges to break down the four
+old ones It was in this way precisely that he got his title of judge. Now,
+when the Judge tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members
+of a court will have to be catechized beforehand upon some subject, I say,
+"You know, Judge; you have tried it." When he says a court of this kind
+will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by
+such a proceeding, I say, "You know best, Judge; you have been through the
+mill." But I cannot shake Judge Douglas's teeth loose from the Dred Scott
+decision. Like some obstinate animal (I mean no disrespect) that will hang
+on when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or you may
+tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. And so I may point out
+to the Judge, and say that he is bespattered all over, from the beginning
+of his political life to the present time, with attacks upon judicial
+decisions; I may cut off limb after limb of his public record, and strive
+to wrench him from a single dictum of the court,--yet I cannot divert him
+from it. He hangs, to the last, to the Dred Scott decision. These things
+show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres
+to this decision, and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of
+the same court.
+
+[A HIBERNIAN: "Give us something besides Dred Scott."]
+
+Yes; no doubt you want to hear something that don't hurt. Now, having
+spoken of the Dred Scott decision, one more word, and I am done. Henry
+Clay, my beau-ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my
+humble life, Henry Clay once said of a class of men who would repress all
+tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation that they must, if they
+would do this, go back to the era of our Independence, and muzzle the
+cannon which thunders its annual joyous return; they must blow out the
+moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
+there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could they
+perpetuate slavery in this country! To my thinking, Judge Douglas is, by
+his example and vast influence, doing that very thing in this
+community, when he says that the negro has nothing in the Declaration of
+Independence. Henry Clay plainly understood the contrary. Judge Douglas
+is going back to the era of our Revolution, and, to the extent of his
+ability, muzzling the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. When
+he invites any people, willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is
+blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he "cares not
+whether slavery is voted down or up,"--that it is a sacred right of
+self-government,--he is, in my judgment, penetrating the human soul and
+eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty in this American
+people. And now I will only say that when, by all these means and
+appliances, Judge Douglas shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to
+an exact accordance with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall
+echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat his views
+and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on these mighty
+questions,--then it needs only the formality of the second Dred Scott
+decision, which he indorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in
+all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
+
+My friends, that ends the chapter. The Judge can take his half-hour.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT,
+
+AUGUST 27, 1858
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--On Saturday last, Judge Douglas and myself first
+met in public discussion. He spoke one hour, I an hour and a half, and
+he replied for half an hour. The order is now reversed. I am to speak an
+hour, he an hour and a half, and then I am to reply for half an hour. I
+propose to devote myself during the first hour to the scope of what was
+brought within the range of his half-hour speech at Ottawa. Of course
+there was brought within the scope in that half-hour's speech something
+of his own opening speech. In the course of that opening argument Judge
+Douglas proposed to me seven distinct interrogatories. In my speech of
+an hour and a half, I attended to some other parts of his speech, and
+incidentally, as I thought, intimated to him that I would answer the rest
+of his interrogatories on condition only that he should agree to answer as
+many for me. He made no intimation at the time of the proposition, nor
+did he in his reply allude at all to that suggestion of mine. I do him no
+injustice in saying that he occupied at least half of his reply in dealing
+with me as though I had refused to answer his interrogatories. I now
+propose that I will answer any of the interrogatories, upon condition that
+he will answer questions from me not exceeding the same number. I give him
+an opportunity to respond.
+
+The Judge remains silent. I now say that I will answer his
+interrogatories, whether he answers mine or not; and that after I have
+done so, I shall propound mine to him.
+
+I have supposed myself, since the organization of the Republican party at
+Bloomington, in May, 1856, bound as a party man by the platforms of the
+party, then and since. If in any interrogatories which I shall answer I go
+beyond the scope of what is within these platforms, it will be perceived
+that no one is responsible but myself.
+
+Having said thus much, I will take up the Judge's interrogatories as I
+find them printed in the Chicago Times, and answer them seriatim. In order
+that there may be no mistake about it, I have copied the interrogatories
+in writing, and also my answers to them. The first one of these
+interrogatories is in these words:
+
+Question 1.--"I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did
+in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law?"
+Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional
+repeal of the Fugitive Slave law.
+
+Q. 2.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did
+in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union,
+even if the people want them?" Answer:--I do not now, nor ever did, stand
+pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union.
+
+Q. 3.--"I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of
+a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that
+State may see fit to make?" Answer:--I do not stand pledged against the
+admission of a new State into the Union, with such a constitution as the
+people of that State may see fit to make.
+
+Q. 4.--"I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition
+of slavery in the District of Columbia?" Answer:--I do not stand to-day
+pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
+
+Q. 5.--"I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the
+prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?" Answer:--I
+do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the
+different States.
+
+Q. 6.--"I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in
+all the Territories of the United States, north as well as south of the
+Missouri Compromise line?" Answer:--I am impliedly, if not expressly,
+pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery
+in all the United States 'Territories.
+
+Q. 7.--"I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of
+any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?" Answer:--I
+am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any
+given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as
+I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery
+question among ourselves.
+
+Now, my friends, it will be perceived, upon an examination of these
+questions and answers, that so far I have only answered that I was
+not pledged to this, that, or the other. The Judge has not framed his
+interrogatories to ask me anything more than this, and I have answered in
+strict accordance with the interrogatories, and have answered truly, that
+I am not pledged at all upon any of the points to which I have answered.
+But I am not disposed to hang upon the exact form of his interrogatory. I
+am rather disposed to take up at least some of these questions, and state
+what I really think upon them.
+
+As to the first one, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law, I have never
+hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think, under
+the Constitution of the United States, the people of the Southern States
+are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave law. Having said that,
+I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave law,
+further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free
+from some of the objections that pertain to it, without lessening its
+efficiency. And inasmuch as we are not now in an agitation in regard to
+an alteration or modification of that law, I would not be the man to
+introduce it as a new subject of agitation upon the general question of
+slavery.
+
+In regard to the other question, of whether I am pledged to the admission
+of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you very frankly that
+I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to
+pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there
+would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must
+add that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the
+territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people
+shall, having a fair chance and a clear field, when they come to adopt
+the constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave
+constitution, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among
+them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into
+the Union.
+
+The third interrogatory is answered by the answer to the second, it being,
+as I conceive, the same as the second.
+
+The fourth one is in regard to the abolition of slavery in the District of
+Columbia. In relation to that, I have my mind very distinctly made up.
+I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of
+Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses the constitutional power to
+abolish it. Yet as a member of Congress, I should not, with my present
+views, be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District
+of Columbia, unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that the
+abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a vote of the
+majority of qualified voters in the District; and third, that compensation
+should be made to unwilling owners. With these three conditions, I
+confess I would be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the
+District of Columbia, and, in the language of Henry Clay, "sweep from our
+capital that foul blot upon our nation."
+
+In regard to the fifth interrogatory, I must say here that, as to the
+question of the abolition of the slave-trade between the different States,
+I can truly answer, as I have, that I am pledged to nothing about it.
+It is a subject to which I have not given that mature consideration that
+would make me feel authorized to state a position so as to hold myself
+entirely bound by it. In other words, that question has never been
+prominently enough before me to induce me to investigate whether we really
+have the constitutional power to do it. I could investigate it if I had
+sufficient time to bring myself to a conclusion upon that subject; but I
+have not done so, and I say so frankly to you here, and to Judge Douglas.
+I must say, however, that if I should be of opinion that Congress does
+possess the constitutional power to abolish the slave-trade among the
+different States, I should still not be in favor of the exercise of that
+power, unless upon some conservative principle as I conceive it, akin to
+what I have said in relation to the abolition of slavery in the District
+of Columbia.
+
+My answer as to whether I desire that slavery should be prohibited in all
+the Territories of the United States is full and explicit within itself,
+and cannot be made clearer by any comments of mine. So I suppose in
+regard to the question whether I am opposed to the acquisition of any more
+territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein, my answer is such
+that I could add nothing by way of illustration, or making myself better
+understood, than the answer which I have placed in writing.
+
+Now in all this the Judge has me, and he has me on the record. I suppose
+he had flattered himself that I was really entertaining one set of
+opinions for one place, and another set for another place; that I was
+afraid to say at one place what I uttered at another. What I am
+saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to
+Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am
+saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons and render them
+enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience.
+
+I now proceed to propound to the Judge the interrogatories, so far as I
+have framed them. I will bring forward a new installment when I get them
+ready. I will bring them forward now only reaching to number four. The
+first one is:
+
+Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
+unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask
+admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite
+number of inhabitants according to the English bill,--some ninety-three
+thousand,--will you vote to admit them?
+
+Q. 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way,
+against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from
+its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?
+
+Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States
+cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing
+in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?
+
+Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of
+how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?
+
+As introductory to these interrogatories which Judge Douglas propounded
+to me at Ottawa, he read a set of resolutions which he said Judge Trumbull
+and myself had participated in adopting, in the first Republican State
+Convention, held at Springfield in October, 1854. He insisted that I and
+Judge Trumbull, and perhaps the entire Republican party, were responsible
+for the doctrines contained in the set of resolutions which he read, and
+I understand that it was from that set of resolutions that he deduced the
+interrogatories which he propounded to me, using these resolutions as a
+sort of authority for propounding those questions to me. Now, I say here
+to-day that I do not answer his interrogatories because of their springing
+at all from that set of resolutions which he read. I answered them
+because Judge Douglas thought fit to ask them. I do not now, nor ever did,
+recognize any responsibility upon myself in that set of resolutions. When
+I replied to him on that occasion, I assured him that I never had anything
+to do with them. I repeat here to today that I never in any possible form
+had anything to do with that set of resolutions It turns out, I believe,
+that those resolutions were never passed in any convention held in
+Springfield.
+
+It turns out that they were never passed at any convention or any public
+meeting that I had any part in. I believe it turns out, in addition to all
+this, that there was not, in the fall of 1854, any convention holding a
+session in Springfield, calling itself a Republican State Convention; yet
+it is true there was a convention, or assemblage of men calling themselves
+a convention, at Springfield, that did pass some resolutions. But so
+little did I really know of the proceedings of that convention, or what
+set of resolutions they had passed, though having a general knowledge that
+there had been such an assemblage of men there, that when Judge Douglas
+read the resolutions, I really did not know but they had been the
+resolutions passed then and there. I did not question that they were the
+resolutions adopted. For I could not bring myself to suppose that Judge
+Douglas could say what he did upon this subject without knowing that it
+was true. I contented myself, on that occasion, with denying, as I truly
+could, all connection with them, not denying or affirming whether they
+were passed at Springfield. Now, it turns out that he had got hold of some
+resolutions passed at some convention or public meeting in Kane County.
+I wish to say here, that I don't conceive that in any fair and just mind
+this discovery relieves me at all. I had just as much to do with the
+convention in Kane County as that at Springfield. I am as much responsible
+for the resolutions at Kane County as those at Springfield,--the amount
+of the responsibility being exactly nothing in either case; no more than
+there would be in regard to a set of resolutions passed in the moon.
+
+I allude to this extraordinary matter in this canvass for some further
+purpose than anything yet advanced. Judge Douglas did not make his
+statement upon that occasion as matters that he believed to be true,
+but he stated them roundly as being true, in such form as to pledge his
+veracity for their truth. When the whole matter turns out as it does, and
+when we consider who Judge Douglas is, that he is a distinguished Senator
+of the United States; that he has served nearly twelve years as such; that
+his character is not at all limited as an ordinary Senator of the United
+States, but that his name has become of world-wide renown,--it is most
+extraordinary that he should so far forget all the suggestions of justice
+to an adversary, or of prudence to himself, as to venture upon the
+assertion of that which the slightest investigation would have shown him
+to be wholly false. I can only account for his having done so upon the
+supposition that that evil genius which has attended him through his life,
+giving to him an apparent astonishing prosperity, such as to lead very
+many good men to doubt there being any advantage in virtue over vice,--I
+say I can only account for it on the supposition that that evil genius has
+as last made up its mind to forsake him.
+
+And I may add that another extraordinary feature of the Judge's conduct in
+this canvass--made more extraordinary by this incident--is, that he is in
+the habit, in almost all the speeches he makes, of charging falsehood upon
+his adversaries, myself and others. I now ask whether he is able to find
+in anything that Judge Trumbull, for instance, has said, or in anything
+that I have said, a justification at all compared with what we have, in
+this instance, for that sort of vulgarity.
+
+I have been in the habit of charging as a matter of belief on my part
+that, in the introduction of the Nebraska Bill into Congress, there was
+a conspiracy to make slavery perpetual and national. I have arranged from
+time to time the evidence which establishes and proves the truth of this
+charge. I recurred to this charge at Ottawa. I shall not now have time to
+dwell upon it at very great length; but inasmuch as Judge Douglas, in
+his reply of half an hour, made some points upon me in relation to it, I
+propose noticing a few of them.
+
+The Judge insists that, in the first speech I made, in which I very
+distinctly made that charge, he thought for a good while I was in fun!
+that I was playful; that I was not sincere about it; and that he only
+grew angry and somewhat excited when he found that I insisted upon it as
+a matter of earnestness. He says he characterized it as a falsehood so far
+as I implicated his moral character in that transaction. Well, I did
+not know, till he presented that view, that I had implicated his moral
+character. He is very much in the habit, when he argues me up into a
+position I never thought of occupying, of very cosily saying he has no
+doubt Lincoln is "conscientious" in saying so. He should remember that I
+did not know but what he was ALTOGETHER "CONSCIENTIOUS" in that matter.
+I can conceive it possible for men to conspire to do a good thing, and
+I really find nothing in Judge Douglas's course of arguments that is
+contrary to or inconsistent with his belief of a conspiracy to nationalize
+and spread slavery as being a good and blessed thing; and so I hope he
+will understand that I do not at all question but that in all this matter
+he is entirely "conscientious."
+
+But to draw your attention to one of the points I made in this case,
+beginning at the beginning: When the Nebraska Bill was introduced, or a
+short time afterward, by an amendment, I believe, it was provided that
+it must be considered "the true intent and meaning of this Act not to
+legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom,
+but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate
+their own domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the
+Constitution of the United States." I have called his attention to the
+fact that when he and some others began arguing that they were giving
+an increased degree of liberty to the people in the Territories over and
+above what they formerly had on the question of slavery, a question was
+raised whether the law was enacted to give such unconditional liberty to
+the people; and to test the sincerity of this mode of argument, Mr.
+Chase, of Ohio, introduced an amendment, in which he made the law--if the
+amendment were adopted--expressly declare that the people of the Territory
+should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw fit. I have asked
+attention also to the fact that Judge Douglas and those who acted with him
+voted that amendment down, notwithstanding it expressed exactly the
+thing they said was the true intent and meaning of the law. I have called
+attention to the fact that in subsequent times a decision of the Supreme
+Court has been made, in which it has been declared that a Territorial
+Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have
+argued and said that for men who did, intend that the people of the
+Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and
+unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly
+inexplicable. It is a puzzle, a riddle. But I have said, that with men who
+did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation that
+such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting
+down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It
+would keep Congress from coming in collision with the decision when it was
+made. Anybody can conceive that if there was an intention or expectation
+that such a decision was to follow, it would not be a very desirable party
+attitude to get into for the Supreme Court--all or nearly all its members
+belonging to the same party--to decide one way, when the party in Congress
+had decided the other way. Hence it would be very rational for men
+expecting such a decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it.
+After pointing this out, I tell Judge Douglas that it looks to me as
+though here was the reason why Chase's amendment was voted down. I tell
+him that, as he did it, and knows why he did it, if it was done for a
+reason different from this, he knows what that reason was and can tell us
+what it was. I tell him, also, it will be vastly more satisfactory to the
+country for him to give some other plausible, intelligible reason why it
+was voted down than to stand upon his dignity and call people liars. Well,
+on Saturday he did make his answer; and what do you think it was? He
+says if I had only taken upon myself to tell the whole truth about that
+amendment of Chase's, no explanation would have been necessary on his part
+or words to that effect. Now, I say here that I am quite unconscious of
+having suppressed anything material to the case, and I am very frank to
+admit if there is any sound reason other than that which appeared to me
+material, it is quite fair for him to present it. What reason does
+he propose? That when Chase came forward with his amendment expressly
+authorizing the people to exclude slavery from the limits of every
+Territory, General Cass proposed to Chase, if he (Chase) would add to his
+amendment that the people should have the power to introduce or exclude,
+they would let it go. This is substantially all of his reply. And because
+Chase would not do that, they voted his amendment down. Well, it turns
+out, I believe, upon examination, that General Cass took some part in the
+little running debate upon that amendment, and then ran away and did not
+vote on it at all. Is not that the fact? So confident, as I think, was
+General Cass that there was a snake somewhere about, he chose to run away
+from the whole thing. This is an inference I draw from the fact that,
+though he took part in the debate, his name does not appear in the ayes
+and noes. But does Judge Douglas's reply amount to a satisfactory answer?
+
+[Cries of "Yes," "Yes," and "No," "No."]
+
+There is some little difference of opinion here. But I ask attention to
+a few more views bearing on the question of whether it amounts to a
+satisfactory answer. The men who were determined that that amendment
+should not get into the bill, and spoil the place where the Dred Scott
+decision was to come in, sought an excuse to get rid of it somewhere.
+One of these ways--one of these excuses--was to ask Chase to add to his
+proposed amendment a provision that the people might introduce slavery if
+they wanted to. They very well knew Chase would do no such thing, that Mr.
+Chase was one of the men differing from them on the broad principle of
+his insisting that freedom was better than slavery,--a man who would not
+consent to enact a law, penned with his own hand, by which he was made to
+recognize slavery on the one hand, and liberty on the other, as precisely
+equal; and when they insisted on his doing this, they very well knew they
+insisted on that which he would not for a moment think of doing, and that
+they were only bluffing him. I believe (I have not, since he made his
+answer, had a chance to examine the journals or Congressional Globe and
+therefore speak from memory)--I believe the state of the bill at that
+time, according to parliamentary rules, was such that no member could
+propose an additional amendment to Chase's amendment. I rather think this
+is the truth,--the Judge shakes his head. Very well. I would like to know,
+then, if they wanted Chase's amendment fixed over, why somebody else could
+not have offered to do it? If they wanted it amended, why did they not
+offer the amendment? Why did they not put it in themselves? But to put it
+on the other ground: suppose that there was such an amendment offered,
+and Chase's was an amendment to an amendment; until one is disposed of by
+parliamentary law, you cannot pile another on. Then all these gentlemen
+had to do was to vote Chase's on, and then, in the amended form in which
+the whole stood, add their own amendment to it, if they wanted to put it
+in that shape. This was all they were obliged to do, and the ayes and noes
+show that there were thirty-six who voted it down, against ten who voted
+in favor of it. The thirty-six held entire sway and control. They could in
+some form or other have put that bill in the exact shape they wanted. If
+there was a rule preventing their amending it at the time, they could pass
+that, and then, Chase's amendment being merged, put it in the shape they
+wanted. They did not choose to do so, but they went into a quibble with
+Chase to get him to add what they knew he would not add, and because he
+would not, they stand upon the flimsy pretext for voting down what they
+argued was the meaning and intent of their own bill. They left room
+thereby for this Dred Scott decision, which goes very far to make slavery
+national throughout the United States.
+
+I pass one or two points I have, because my time will very soon expire;
+but I must be allowed to say that Judge Douglas recurs again, as he
+did upon one or two other occasions, to the enormity of Lincoln, an
+insignificant individual like Lincoln,--upon his ipse dixit charging a
+conspiracy upon a large number of members of Congress, the Supreme Court,
+and two Presidents, to nationalize slavery. I want to say that, in the
+first place, I have made no charge of this sort upon my ipse dixit. I have
+only arrayed the evidence tending to prove it, and presented it to the
+understanding of others, saying what I think it proves, but giving you
+the means of judging whether it proves it or not. This is precisely what
+I have done. I have not placed it upon my ipse dixit at all. On this
+occasion, I wish to recall his attention to a piece of evidence which
+I brought forward at Ottawa on Saturday, showing that he had made
+substantially the same charge against substantially the same persons,
+excluding his dear self from the category. I ask him to give some
+attention to the evidence which I brought forward that he himself had
+discovered a "fatal blow being struck" against the right of the people
+to exclude slavery from their limits, which fatal blow he assumed as in
+evidence in an article in the Washington Union, published "by authority."
+I ask by whose authority? He discovers a similar or identical provision
+in the Lecompton Constitution. Made by whom? The framers of that
+Constitution. Advocated by whom? By all the members of the party in the
+nation, who advocated the introduction of Kansas into the Union under the
+Lecompton Constitution. I have asked his attention to the evidence that he
+arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts
+which he brought forward in support of that charge,--being identical
+with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it, not at
+a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and
+the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and those
+framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him that
+although my ipse dixit may not be as great as his, yet it somewhat reduces
+the force of his calling my attention to the enormity of my making a like
+charge against him.
+
+Go on, Judge Douglas.
+
+
+
+
+Mr. LINCOLN'S REJOINDER.
+
+MY FRIENDS:--It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour,
+notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an
+hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has
+said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I
+omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an
+impossibility for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take up some
+of the points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my half-hour specially on
+them.
+
+The first thing I have to say to you is a word in regard to Judge
+Douglas's declaration about the "vulgarity and blackguardism" in the
+audience, that no such thing, as he says, was shown by any Democrat while
+I was speaking. Now, I only wish, by way of reply on this subject, to say
+that while I was speaking, I used no "vulgarity or blackguardism" toward
+any Democrat.
+
+Now, my friends, I come to all this long portion of the Judge's
+speech,--perhaps half of it,--which he has devoted to the various
+resolutions and platforms that have been adopted in the different counties
+in the different Congressional districts, and in the Illinois legislature,
+which he supposes are at variance with the positions I have assumed before
+you to-day. It is true that many of these resolutions are at variance
+with the positions I have here assumed. All I have to ask is that we talk
+reasonably and rationally about it. I happen to know, the Judge's opinion
+to the contrary notwithstanding, that I have never tried to conceal my
+opinions, nor tried to deceive any one in reference to them. He may go
+and examine all the members who voted for me for United States Senator in
+1855, after the election of 1854. They were pledged to certain things here
+at home, and were determined to have pledges from me; and if he will find
+any of these persons who will tell him anything inconsistent with what I
+say now, I will resign, or rather retire from the race, and give him no
+more trouble. The plain truth is this: At the introduction of the Nebraska
+policy, we believed there was a new era being introduced in the history of
+the Republic, which tended to the spread and perpetuation of slavery. But
+in our opposition to that measure we did not agree with one another in
+everything. The people in the north end of the State were for stronger
+measures of opposition than we of the central and southern portions of the
+State, but we were all opposed to the Nebraska doctrine. We had that one
+feeling and that one sentiment in common. You at the north end met in your
+conventions and passed your resolutions. We in the middle of the State and
+farther south did not hold such conventions and pass the same resolutions,
+although we had in general a common view and a common sentiment. So that
+these meetings which the Judge has alluded to, and the resolutions he has
+read from, were local, and did not spread over the whole State. We at last
+met together in 1886, from all parts of the State, and we agreed upon a
+common platform. You, who held more extreme notions, either yielded
+those notions, or, if not wholly yielding them, agreed to yield them
+practically, for the sake of embodying the opposition to the measures
+which the opposite party were pushing forward at that time. We met you
+then, and if there was anything yielded, it was for practical purposes. We
+agreed then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State of
+Illinois, and now we are all bound, as a party, to that platform.
+
+And I say here to you, if any one expects of me--in case of my
+election--that I will do anything not signified by our Republican platform
+and my answers here to-day, I tell you very frankly that person will be
+deceived. I do not ask for the vote of any one who supposes that I have
+secret purposes or pledges that I dare not speak out. Cannot the Judge be
+satisfied? If he fears, in the unfortunate case of my election, that my
+going to Washington will enable me to advocate sentiments contrary to
+those which I expressed when you voted for and elected me, I assure him
+that his fears are wholly needless and groundless. Is the Judge really
+afraid of any such thing? I'll tell you what he is afraid of. He is afraid
+we'll all pull together. This is what alarms him more than anything else.
+For my part, I do hope that all of us, entertaining a common sentiment in
+opposition to what appears to us a design to nationalize and perpetuate
+slavery, will waive minor differences on questions which either belong
+to the dead past or the distant future, and all pull together in this
+struggle. What are your sentiments? If it be true that on the ground which
+I occupy--ground which I occupy as frankly and boldly as Judge Douglas
+does his,--my views, though partly coinciding with yours, are not as
+perfectly in accordance with your feelings as his are, I do say to you
+in all candor, go for him, and not for me. I hope to deal in all things
+fairly with Judge Douglas, and with the people of the State, in this
+contest. And if I should never be elected to any office, I trust I may go
+down with no stain of falsehood upon my reputation, notwithstanding the
+hard opinions Judge Douglas chooses to entertain of me.
+
+The Judge has again addressed himself to the Abolition tendencies of a
+speech of mine made at Springfield in June last. I have so often tried
+to answer what he is always saying on that melancholy theme that I almost
+turn with disgust from the discussion,--from the repetition of an answer
+to it. I trust that nearly all of this intelligent audience have read
+that speech. If you have, I may venture to leave it to you to inspect
+it closely, and see whether it contains any of those "bugaboos" which
+frighten Judge Douglas.
+
+The Judge complains that I did not fully answer his questions. If I have
+the sense to comprehend and answer those questions, I have done so fairly.
+If it can be pointed out to me how I can more fully and fairly answer him,
+I aver I have not the sense to see how it is to be done. He says I do not
+declare I would in any event vote for the admission of a slave State into
+the Union. If I have been fairly reported, he will see that I did give an
+explicit answer to his interrogatories; I did not merely say that I would
+dislike to be put to the test, but I said clearly, if I were put to the
+test, and a Territory from which slavery had been excluded should
+present herself with a State constitution sanctioning slavery,--a most
+extraordinary thing, and wholly unlikely to happen,--I did not see how I
+could avoid voting for her admission. But he refuses to understand that I
+said so, and he wants this audience to understand that I did not say
+so. Yet it will be so reported in the printed speech that he cannot help
+seeing it.
+
+He says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I would be
+voting for a dissolution of the Union, because I hold that the Union
+cannot permanently exist half slave and half free. I repeat that I do not
+believe this government can endure permanently half slave and half free;
+yet I do not admit, nor does it at all follow, that the admission of a
+single slave State will permanently fix the character and establish this
+as a universal slave nation. The Judge is very happy indeed at working up
+these quibbles. Before leaving the subject of answering questions, I aver
+as my confident belief, when you come to see our speeches in print, that
+you will find every question which he has asked me more fairly and boldly
+and fully answered than he has answered those which I put to him. Is not
+that so? The two speeches may be placed side by side, and I will venture
+to leave it to impartial judges whether his questions have not been more
+directly and circumstantially answered than mine.
+
+Judge Douglas says he made a charge upon the editor of the Washington
+Union, alone, of entertaining a purpose to rob the States of their power
+to exclude slavery from their limits. I undertake to say, and I make the
+direct issue, that he did not make his charge against the editor of the
+Union alone. I will undertake to prove by the record here that he made
+that charge against more and higher dignitaries than the editor of the
+Washington Union. I am quite aware that he was shirking and dodging around
+the form in which he put it, but I can make it manifest that he leveled
+his "fatal blow" against more persons than this Washington editor. Will he
+dodge it now by alleging that I am trying to defend Mr. Buchanan against
+the charge? Not at all. Am I not making the same charge myself? I am
+trying to show that you, Judge Douglas, are a witness on my side. I am not
+defending Buchanan, and I will tell Judge Douglas that in my opinion, when
+he made that charge, he had an eye farther north than he has to-day. He
+was then fighting against people who called him a Black Republican and
+an Abolitionist. It is mixed all through his speech, and it is tolerably
+manifest that his eye was a great deal farther north than it is to-day.
+The Judge says that though he made this charge, Toombs got up and declared
+there was not a man in the United States, except the editor of the Union,
+who was in favor of the doctrines put forth in that article. And thereupon
+I understand that the Judge withdrew the charge. Although he had taken
+extracts from the newspaper, and then from the Lecompton Constitution, to
+show the existence of a conspiracy to bring about a "fatal blow," by which
+the States were to be deprived of the right of excluding slavery, it all
+went to pot as soon as Toombs got up and told him it was not true.
+It reminds me of the story that John Phoenix, the California railroad
+surveyor, tells. He says they started out from the Plaza to the Mission
+of Dolores. They had two ways of determining distances. One was by a chain
+and pins taken over the ground. The other was by a "go-it-ometer,"--an
+invention of his own,--a three-legged instrument, with which he computed
+a series of triangles between the points. At night he turned to the
+chain-man to ascertain what distance they had come, and found that by some
+mistake he had merely dragged the chain over the ground, without keeping
+any record. By the "go-it-ometer," he found he had made ten miles. Being
+skeptical about this, he asked a drayman who was passing how far it was to
+the Plaza. The drayman replied it was just half a mile; and the surveyor
+put it down in his book,--just as Judge Douglas says, after he had made
+his calculations and computations, he took Toombs's statement. I have
+no doubt that after Judge Douglas had made his charge, he was as easily
+satisfied about its truth as the surveyor was of the drayman's statement
+of the distance to the Plaza. Yet it is a fact that the man who put forth
+all that matter which Douglas deemed a "fatal blow" at State sovereignty
+was elected by the Democrats as public printer.
+
+Now, gentlemen, you may take Judge Douglas's speech of March 22, 1858,
+beginning about the middle of page 21, and reading to the bottom of page
+24, and you will find the evidence on which I say that he did not make his
+charge against the editor of the Union alone. I cannot stop to read it,
+but I will give it to the reporters. Judge Douglas said:
+
+"Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
+advanced boldly by the Washington Union editorially, and apparently
+authoritatively, and every man who questions any of them is denounced as
+an Abolitionist, a Free-soiler, a fanatic. The propositions are, first,
+that the primary object of all government at its original institution is
+the protection of persons and property; second, that the Constitution
+of the United States declares that the citizens of each State shall be
+entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several
+States; and that, therefore, thirdly, all State laws, whether organic
+or otherwise, which prohibit the citizens of one State from settling in
+another with their slave property, and especially declaring it forfeited,
+are direct violations of the original intention of the Government and
+Constitution of the United States; and, fourth, that the emancipation of
+the slaves of the Northern States was a gross outrage on the rights of
+property, in as much as it was involuntarily done on the part of the
+owner.
+
+"Remember that this article was published in the Union on the 17th of
+November, and on the 18th appeared the first article giving the adhesion
+of the Union to the Lecompton Constitution. It was in these words:
+
+"'KANSAS AND HER CONSTITUTION.--The vexed question is settled. The problem
+is solved. The dead point of danger is passed. All serious trouble to
+Kansas affairs is over and gone...."
+
+"And a column, nearly, of the same sort. Then, when you come to look into
+the Lecompton Constitution, you find the same doctrine incorporated in it
+which was put forth editorially in the Union. What is it?
+
+"'ARTICLE 7, Section i. The right of property is before and higher than
+any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such
+slave and its increase is the same and as invariable as the right of the
+owner of any property whatever.'
+
+"Then in the schedule is a provision that the Constitution may be amended
+after 1864 by a two-thirds vote.
+
+"'But no alteration shall be made to affect the right of property in the
+ownership of slaves.'
+
+"It will be seen by these clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they
+are identical in spirit with this authoritative article in the Washington
+Union of the day previous to its indorsement of this Constitution.
+
+"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by
+the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 18th of November,
+and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that a State
+has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a
+fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."
+
+Here he says, "Mr. President, you here find several distinct propositions
+advanced boldly, and apparently authoritatively." By whose authority,
+Judge Douglas? Again, he says in another place, "It will be seen by these
+clauses in the Lecompton Constitution that they are identical in spirit
+with this authoritative article." By whose authority,--who do you mean
+to say authorized the publication of these articles? He knows that the
+Washington Union is considered the organ of the Administration. I demand
+of Judge Douglas by whose authority he meant to say those articles were
+published, if not by the authority of the President of the United States
+and his Cabinet? I defy him to show whom he referred to, if not to these
+high functionaries in the Federal Government. More than this, he says the
+articles in that paper and the provisions of the Lecompton Constitution
+are "identical," and, being identical, he argues that the authors
+are co-operating and conspiring together. He does not use the word
+"conspiring," but what other construction can you put upon it? He winds
+up:
+
+"When I saw that article in the Union of the 17th of November, followed by
+the glorification of the Lecompton Constitution on the 18th of November,
+and this clause in the Constitution asserting the doctrine that a State
+has no right to prohibit slavery within its limits, I saw that there was a
+fatal blow being struck at the sovereignty of the States of this Union."
+
+I ask him if all this fuss was made over the editor of this newspaper. It
+would be a terribly "fatal blow" indeed which a single man could strike,
+when no President, no Cabinet officer, no member of Congress, was giving
+strength and efficiency to the movement. Out of respect to Judge Douglas's
+good sense I must believe he did n't manufacture his idea of the "fatal"
+character of that blow out of such a miserable scapegrace as he represents
+that editor to be. But the Judge's eye is farther south now. Then, it
+was very peculiarly and decidedly north. His hope rested on the idea of
+visiting the great "Black Republican" party, and making it the tail of
+his new kite. He knows he was then expecting from day to day to turn
+Republican, and place himself at the head of our organization. He has
+found that these despised "Black Republicans" estimate him by a standard
+which he has taught them none too well. Hence he is crawling back into his
+old camp, and you will find him eventually installed in full fellowship
+among those whom he was then battling, and with whom he now pretends to be
+at such fearful variance.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD JOINT DEBATE, AT JONESBORO,
+
+SEPTEMBER 15, 1858
+
+Mr. LINCOLN'S REPLY.
+
+LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--There is very much in the principles that Judge
+Douglas has here enunciated that I most cordially approve, and over which
+I shall have no controversy with him. In so far as he has insisted that
+all the States have the right to do exactly as they please about all their
+domestic relations, including that of slavery, I agree entirely with him.
+He places me wrong in spite of all I can tell him, though I repeat it
+again and again, insisting that I have no difference with him upon this
+subject. I have made a great many speeches, some of which have been
+printed, and it will be utterly impossible for him to find anything that
+I have ever put in print contrary to what I now say upon this subject. I
+hold myself under constitutional obligations to allow the people in all
+the States, without interference, direct or indirect, to do exactly as
+they please; and I deny that I have any inclination to interfere with
+them, even if there were no such constitutional obligation. I can only say
+again that I am placed improperly--altogether improperly, in spite of all
+I can say--when it is insisted that I entertain any other view or purposes
+in regard to that matter.
+
+While I am upon this subject, I will make some answers briefly to certain
+propositions that Judge Douglas has put. He says, "Why can't this Union
+endure permanently half slave and half free?" I have said that I supposed
+it could not, and I will try, before this new audience, to give briefly
+some of the reasons for entertaining that opinion. Another form of his
+question is, "Why can't we let it stand as our fathers placed it?" That is
+the exact difficulty between us. I say that Judge Douglas and his friends
+have changed it from the position in which our fathers originally placed
+it. I say, in the way our father's originally left the slavery question,
+the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the
+public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate
+extinction. I say when this government was first established it was the
+policy of its founders to prohibit the spread of slavery into the new
+Territories of the United States, where it had not existed. But Judge
+Douglas and his friends have broken up that policy, and placed it upon
+a new basis, by which it is to become national and perpetual. All I have
+asked or desired anywhere is that it should be placed back again upon the
+basis that the fathers of our government originally placed it upon. I have
+no doubt that it would become extinct, for all time to come, if we but
+readopted the policy of the fathers, by restricting it to the limits it
+has already covered, restricting it from the new Territories.
+
+I do not wish to dwell at great length on this branch of the subject at
+this time, but allow me to repeat one thing that I have stated before.
+Brooks--the man who assaulted Senator Sumner on the floor of the
+Senate, and who was complimented with dinners, and silver pitchers, and
+gold-headed canes, and a good many other things for that feat--in one
+of his speeches declared that when this government was originally
+established, nobody expected that the institution of slavery would last
+until this day. That was but the opinion of one man, but it was such an
+opinion as we can never get from Judge Douglas or anybody in favor of
+slavery, in the North, at all. You can sometimes get it from a Southern
+man. He said at the same time that the framers of our government did not
+have the knowledge that experience has taught us; that experience and
+the invention of the cotton-gin have taught us that the perpetuation of
+slavery is a necessity. He insisted, therefore, upon its being changed
+from the basis upon which the fathers of the government left it to the
+basis of its perpetuation and nationalization.
+
+I insist that this is the difference between Judge Douglas and
+myself,--that Judge Douglas is helping that change along. I insist upon
+this government being placed where our fathers originally placed it.
+
+I remember Judge Douglas once said that he saw the evidences on the
+statute books of Congress of a policy in the origin of government
+to divide slavery and freedom by a geographical line; that he saw an
+indisposition to maintain that policy, and therefore he set about studying
+up a way to settle the institution on the right basis,--the basis which he
+thought it ought to have been placed upon at first; and in that speech he
+confesses that he seeks to place it, not upon the basis that the fathers
+placed it upon, but upon one gotten up on "original principles." When he
+asks me why we cannot get along with it in the attitude where our fathers
+placed it, he had better clear up the evidences that he has himself
+changed it from that basis, that he has himself been chiefly instrumental
+in changing the policy of the fathers. Any one who will read his speech
+of the 22d of last March will see that he there makes an open confession,
+showing that he set about fixing the institution upon an altogether
+different set of principles. I think I have fully answered him when he
+asks me why we cannot let it alone upon the basis where our fathers
+left it, by showing that he has himself changed the whole policy of the
+government in that regard.
+
+Now, fellow-citizens, in regard to this matter about a contract that was
+made between Judge Trumbull and myself, and all that long portion of Judge
+Douglas's speech on this subject,--I wish simply to say what I have said
+to him before, that he cannot know whether it is true or not, and I do
+know that there is not a word of truth in it. And I have told him so
+before. I don't want any harsh language indulged in, but I do not know
+how to deal with this persistent insisting on a story that I know to be
+utterly without truth. It used to be a fashion amongst men that when a
+charge was made, some sort of proof was brought forward to establish it,
+and if no proof was found to exist, the charge was dropped. I don't know
+how to meet this kind of an argument. I don't want to have a fight
+with Judge Douglas, and I have no way of making an argument up into the
+consistency of a corn-cob and stopping his mouth with it. All I can do
+is--good-humoredly--to say that, from the beginning to the end of all that
+story about a bargain between Judge Trumbull and myself, there is not a
+word of truth in it. I can only ask him to show some sort of evidence
+of the truth of his story. He brings forward here and reads from what he
+contends is a speech by James H. Matheny, charging such a bargain between
+Trumbull and myself. My own opinion is that Matheny did do some such
+immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I believe he
+did. I contradicted it instantly, and it has been contradicted by Judge
+Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is none. Now,
+whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really the
+one Matheny made, I do not know, and I hope the Judge will pardon me for
+doubting the genuineness of this document, since his production of those
+Springfield resolutions at Ottawa. I do not wish to dwell at any great
+length upon this matter. I can say nothing when a long story like this is
+told, except it is not true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall
+produce some proof. That is all any man can do, and I leave it in that
+way, for I know of no other way of dealing with it.
+
+[In an argument on the lines of: "Yes, you did.--No, I did not." It bears
+on the former to prove his point, not on the negative to "prove" that he
+did not--even if he easily can do so.]
+
+The Judge has gone over a long account of the old Whig and Democratic
+parties, and it connects itself with this charge against Trumbull and
+myself. He says that they agreed upon a compromise in regard to the
+slavery question in 1850; that in a National Democratic Convention
+resolutions were passed to abide by that compromise as a finality upon the
+slavery question. He also says that the Whig party in National Convention
+agreed to abide by and regard as a finality the Compromise of 1850. I
+understand the Judge to be altogether right about that; I understand
+that part of the history of the country as stated by him to be correct
+I recollect that I, as a member of that party, acquiesced in that
+compromise. I recollect in the Presidential election which followed,
+when we had General Scott up for the presidency, Judge Douglas was around
+berating us Whigs as Abolitionists, precisely as he does to-day,--not a
+bit of difference. I have often heard him. We could do nothing when the
+old Whig party was alive that was not Abolitionism, but it has got an
+extremely good name since it has passed away.
+
+[It almost a natural law that, when dead--no matter how bad we were--we
+are automatically beatified.]
+
+When that Compromise was made it did not repeal the old Missouri
+Compromise. It left a region of United States territory half as large
+as the present territory of the United States, north of the line of 36
+degrees 30 minutes, in which slavery was prohibited by Act of Congress.
+This Compromise did not repeal that one. It did not affect or propose to
+repeal it. But at last it became Judge Douglas's duty, as he thought (and
+I find no fault with him), as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, to
+bring in a bill for the organization of a territorial government,--first
+of one, then of two Territories north of that line. When he did so, it
+ended in his inserting a provision substantially repealing the Missouri
+Compromise. That was because the Compromise of 1850 had not repealed it.
+And now I ask why he could not have let that Compromise alone? We were
+quiet from the agitation of the slavery question. We were making no fuss
+about it. All had acquiesced in the Compromise measures of 1850. We
+never had been seriously disturbed by any Abolition agitation before that
+period. When he came to form governments for the Territories north of the
+line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, why could he not have let that matter stand
+as it was standing? Was it necessary to the organization of a Territory?
+Not at all. Iowa lay north of the line, and had been organized as a
+Territory and come into the Union as a State without disturbing that
+Compromise. There was no sort of necessity for destroying it to organize
+these Territories. But, gentlemen, it would take up all my time to meet
+all the little quibbling arguments of Judge Douglas to show that the
+Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Compromise of 1850. My own opinion
+is, that a careful investigation of all the arguments to sustain the
+position that that Compromise was virtually repealed by the Compromise of
+1850 would show that they are the merest fallacies. I have the report that
+Judge Douglas first brought into Congress at the time of the introduction
+of the Nebraska Bill, which in its original form did not repeal the
+Missouri Compromise, and he there expressly stated that he had forborne to
+do so because it had not been done by the Compromise of 1850. I close this
+part of the discussion on my part by asking him the question again, "Why,
+when we had peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not have let it
+alone?"
+
+In complaining of what I said in my speech at Springfield, in which he
+says I accepted my nomination for the senatorship (where, by the way, he
+is at fault, for if he will examine it, he will find no acceptance in it),
+he again quotes that portion in which I said that "a house divided against
+itself cannot stand." Let me say a word in regard to that matter.
+
+He tries to persuade us that there must be a variety in the different
+institutions of the States of the Union; that that variety necessarily
+proceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the face of the country,
+and the difference in the natural features of the States. I agree to all
+that. Have these very matters ever produced any difficulty amongst us? Not
+at all. Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact that they have laws
+in Louisiana designed to regulate the commerce that springs from the
+production of sugar? Or because we have a different class relative to the
+production of flour in this State? Have they produced any differences? Not
+at all. They are the very cements of this Union. They don't make the house
+a house divided against itself. They are the props that hold up the house
+and sustain the Union.
+
+But has it been so with this element of slavery? Have we not always had
+quarrels and difficulties over it? And when will we cease to have quarrels
+over it? Like causes produce like effects. It is worth while to observe
+that we have generally had comparative peace upon the slavery question,
+and that there has been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the
+effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has been limited to
+its present bounds, and there has been no effort to spread it, there has
+been peace. All the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from efforts to
+spread it over more territory. It was thus at the date of the Missouri
+Compromise. It was so again with the annexation of Texas; so with the
+territory acquired by the Mexican war; and it is so now. Whenever there
+has been an effort to spread it, there has been agitation and resistance.
+Now, I appeal to this audience (very few of whom are my political
+friends), as national men, whether we have reason to expect that the
+agitation in regard to this subject will cease while the causes that tend
+to reproduce agitation are actively at work? Will not the same cause that
+produced agitation in 1820, when the Missouri Compromise was formed, that
+which produced the agitation upon the annexation of Texas, and at other
+times, work out the same results always? Do you think that the nature of
+man will be changed, that the same causes that produced agitation at one
+time will not have the same effect at another?
+
+This has been the result so far as my observation of the slavery question
+and my reading in history extends. What right have we then to hope that
+the trouble will cease,--that the agitation will come to an end,--until
+it shall either be placed back where it originally stood, and where
+the fathers originally placed it, or, on the other hand, until it shall
+entirely master all opposition? This is the view I entertain, and this
+is the reason why I entertained it, as Judge Douglas has read from my
+Springfield speech.
+
+Now, my friends, there is one other thing that I feel myself under some
+sort of obligation to mention. Judge Douglas has here to-day--in a very
+rambling way, I was about saying--spoken of the platforms for which he
+seeks to hold me responsible. He says, "Why can't you come out and make
+an open avowal of principles in all places alike?" and he reads from an
+advertisement that he says was used to notify the people of a speech to be
+made by Judge Trumbull at Waterloo. In commenting on it he desires to know
+whether we cannot speak frankly and manfully, as he and his friends do.
+How, I ask, do his friends speak out their own sentiments? A Convention
+of his party in this State met on the 21st of April at Springfield, and
+passed a set of resolutions which they proclaim to the country as their
+platform. This does constitute their platform, and it is because Judge
+Douglas claims it is his platform--that these are his principles and
+purposes--that he has a right to declare he speaks his sentiments "frankly
+and manfully." On the 9th of June Colonel John Dougherty, Governor
+Reynolds, and others, calling themselves National Democrats, met
+in Springfield and adopted a set of resolutions which are as easily
+understood, as plain and as definite in stating to the country and to
+the world what they believed in and would stand upon, as Judge Douglas's
+platform Now, what is the reason that Judge Douglas is not willing that
+Colonel Dougherty and Governor Reynolds should stand upon their own
+written and printed platform as well as he upon his? Why must he look
+farther than their platform when he claims himself to stand by his
+platform?
+
+Again, in reference to our platform: On the 16th of June the Republicans
+had their Convention and published their platform, which is as clear and
+distinct as Judge Douglas's. In it they spoke their principles as plainly
+and as definitely to the world. What is the reason that Judge Douglas
+is not willing I should stand upon that platform? Why must he go around
+hunting for some one who is supporting me or has supported me at some
+time in his life, and who has said something at some time contrary to that
+platform? Does the Judge regard that rule as a good one? If it turn out
+that the rule is a good one for me--that I am responsible for any and
+every opinion that any man has expressed who is my friend,--then it is a
+good rule for him. I ask, is it not as good a rule for him as it is for
+me? In my opinion, it is not a good rule for either of us. Do you think
+differently, Judge?
+
+[Mr. DOUGLAS: I do not.]
+
+Judge Douglas says he does not think differently. I am glad of it. Then
+can he tell me why he is looking up resolutions of five or six years ago,
+and insisting that they were my platform, notwithstanding my protest that
+they are not, and never were my platform, and my pointing out the platform
+of the State Convention which he delights to say nominated me for the
+Senate? I cannot see what he means by parading these resolutions, if it
+is not to hold me responsible for them in some way. If he says to me here
+that he does not hold the rule to be good, one way or the other, I do not
+comprehend how he could answer me more fully if he answered me at greater
+length. I will therefore put in as my answer to the resolutions that he
+has hunted up against me, what I, as a lawyer, would call a good plea to a
+bad declaration. I understand that it is an axiom of law that a poor plea
+may be a good plea to a bad declaration. I think that the opinions the
+Judge brings from those who support me, yet differ from me, is a bad
+declaration against me; but if I can bring the same things against him, I
+am putting in a good plea to that kind of declaration, and now I propose
+to try it.
+
+At Freeport, Judge Douglas occupied a large part of his time in producing
+resolutions and documents of various sorts, as I understood, to make me
+somehow responsible for them; and I propose now doing a little of the
+same sort of thing for him. In 1850 a very clever gentleman by the name
+of Thompson Campbell, a personal friend of Judge Douglas and myself, a
+political friend of Judge Douglas and opponent of mine, was a candidate
+for Congress in the Galena District. He was interrogated as to his views
+on this same slavery question. I have here before me the interrogatories,
+and Campbell's answers to them--I will read them:
+
+
+
+
+INTERROGATORIES:
+
+"1st. Will you, if elected, vote for and cordially support a bill
+prohibiting slavery in the Territories of the United States?
+
+"2d. Will you vote for and support a bill abolishing slavery in the
+District of Columbia?
+
+"3d. Will you oppose the admission of any Slave States which may be formed
+out of Texas or the Territories?
+
+"4th. Will you vote for and advocate the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law
+passed at the recent session of Congress?
+
+"5th. Will you advocate and vote for the election of a Speaker of the
+House of Representatives who shall be willing to organize the committees
+of that House so as to give the Free States their just influence in the
+business of legislation?
+
+"6th. What are your views, not only as to the constitutional right of
+Congress to prohibit the slave-trade between the States, but also as to
+the expediency of exercising that right immediately?"
+
+
+
+
+CAMPBELL'S REPLY.
+
+"To the first and second interrogatories, I answer unequivocally in the
+affirmative.
+
+"To the third interrogatory I reply, that I am opposed to the admission of
+any more Slave States into the Union, that may be formed out of Texas or
+any other Territory.
+
+"To the fourth and fifth interrogatories I unhesitatingly answer in the
+affirmative.
+
+"To the sixth interrogatory I reply, that so long as the Slave States
+continue to treat slaves as articles of commerce, the Constitution confers
+power on Congress to pass laws regulating that peculiar COMMERCE, and that
+the protection of Human Rights imperatively demands the interposition of
+every constitutional means to prevent this most inhuman and iniquitous
+traffic.
+
+"T. CAMPBELL."
+
+
+I want to say here that Thompson Campbell was elected to Congress on that
+platform, as the Democratic candidate in the Galena District, against
+Martin P. Sweet.
+
+[Judge DOUGLAS: Give me the date of the letter.]
+
+The time Campbell ran was in 1850. I have not the exact date here. It
+was some time in 1850 that these interrogatories were put and the answer
+given. Campbell was elected to Congress, and served out his term. I think
+a second election came up before he served out his term, and he was
+not re-elected. Whether defeated or not nominated, I do not know. [Mr.
+Campbell was nominated for re-election by the Democratic party, by
+acclamation.] At the end of his term his very good friend Judge Douglas
+got him a high office from President Pierce, and sent him off to
+California. Is not that the fact? Just at the end of his term in Congress
+it appears that our mutual friend Judge Douglas got our mutual friend
+Campbell a good office, and sent him to California upon it. And not only
+so, but on the 27th of last month, when Judge Douglas and myself spoke at
+Freeport in joint discussion, there was his same friend Campbell, come
+all the way from California, to help the Judge beat me; and there was poor
+Martin P. Sweet standing on the platform, trying to help poor me to be
+elected. That is true of one of Judge Douglas's friends.
+
+So again, in that same race of 1850, there was a Congressional Convention
+assembled at Joliet, and it nominated R. S. Molony for Congress, and
+unanimously adopted the following resolution:
+
+"Resolved, That we are uncompromisingly opposed to the extension
+of slavery; and while we would not make such opposition a ground of
+interference with the interests of the States where it exists, yet we
+moderately but firmly insist that it is the duty of Congress to oppose
+its extension into Territory now free, by all means compatible with the
+obligations of the Constitution, and with good faith to our sister States;
+that these principles were recognized by the Ordinance of 1787, which
+received the sanction of Thomas Jefferson, who is acknowledged by all to
+be the great oracle and expounder of our faith."
+
+Subsequently the same interrogatories were propounded to Dr. Molony which
+had been addressed to Campbell as above, with the exception of the 6th,
+respecting the interstate slave trade, to which Dr. Molony, the Democratic
+nominee for Congress, replied as follows:
+
+"I received the written interrogatories this day, and, as you will see by
+the La Salle Democrat and Ottawa Free Trader, I took at Peru on the 5th,
+and at Ottawa on the 7th, the affirmative side of interrogatories 1st and
+2d; and in relation to the admission of any more Slave States from Free
+Territory, my position taken at these meetings, as correctly reported in
+said papers, was emphatically and distinctly opposed to it. In relation
+to the admission of any more Slave States from Texas, whether I shall go
+against it or not will depend upon the opinion that I may hereafter form
+of the true meaning and nature of the resolutions of annexation. If, by
+said resolutions, the honor and good faith of the nation is pledged to
+admit more Slave States from Texas when she (Texas) may apply for the
+admission of such State, then I should, if in Congress, vote for their
+admission. But if not so PLEDGED and bound by sacred contract, then a bill
+for the admission of more Slave States from Texas would never receive my
+vote.
+
+"To your fourth interrogatory I answer most decidedly in the affirmative,
+and for reasons set forth in my reported remarks at Ottawa last Monday.
+
+"To your fifth interrogatory I also reply in the affirmative most
+cordially, and that I will use my utmost exertions to secure the
+nomination and election of a man who will accomplish the objects of said
+interrogatories. I most cordially approve of the resolutions adopted at
+the Union meeting held at Princeton on the 27th September ult.
+
+"Yours, etc., R. S. MOLONY."
+
+
+All I have to say in regard to Dr. Molony is that he was the regularly
+nominated Democratic candidate for Congress in his district; was elected
+at that time; at the end of his term was appointed to a land-office at
+Danville. (I never heard anything of Judge Douglas's instrumentality
+in this.) He held this office a considerable time, and when we were at
+Freeport the other day there were handbills scattered about notifying the
+public that after our debate was over R. S. Molony would make a Democratic
+speech in favor of Judge Douglas. That is all I know of my own personal
+knowledge. It is added here to this resolution, and truly I believe, that
+among those who participated in the Joliet Convention, and who supported
+its nominee, with his platform as laid down in the resolution of the
+Convention and in his reply as above given, we call at random the
+following names, all of which are recognized at this day as leading
+Democrats:
+
+"Cook County,--E. B. Williams, Charles McDonell, Arno Voss, Thomas Hoyne,
+Isaac Cook."
+
+I reckon we ought to except Cook.
+
+  "F. C. Sherman.
+  "Will,--Joel A. Matteson, S. W. Bowen.
+  "Kane,--B. F. Hall, G. W. Renwick, A. M. Herrington, Elijah Wilcox.
+  "McHenry,--W. M. Jackson, Enos W. Smith, Neil Donnelly.
+  La Salle,--John Hise, William Reddick."
+
+William Reddick! another one of Judge Douglas's friends that stood on the
+stand with him at Ottawa, at the time the Judge says my knees trembled so
+that I had to be carried away. The names are all here:
+
+  "Du Page,--Nathan Allen.
+  "De Kalb,--Z. B. Mayo."
+
+Here is another set of resolutions which I think are apposite to the
+matter in hand.
+
+On the 28th of February of the same year a Democratic District Convention
+was held at Naperville to nominate a candidate for Circuit Judge. Among
+the delegates were Bowen and Kelly of Will; Captain Naper, H. H. Cody,
+Nathan Allen, of Du Page; W. M. Jackson, J. M. Strode, P. W. Platt, and
+Enos W. Smith of McHenry; J. Horssnan and others of Winnebago. Colonel
+Strode presided over the Convention. The following resolutions were
+unanimously adopted,--the first on motion of P. W. Platt, the second on
+motion of William M. Jackson:
+
+"Resolved, That this Convention is in favor of the Wilmot Proviso, both in
+Principle and Practice, and that we know of no good reason why any person
+should oppose the largest latitude in Free Soil, Free Territory and Free
+speech.
+
+"Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the time has arrived
+when all men should be free, whites as well as others."
+
+[Judge DOUGLAS: What is the date of those resolutions?]
+
+I understand it was in 1850, but I do not know it. I do not state a thing
+and say I know it, when I do not. But I have the highest belief that this
+is so. I know of no way to arrive at the conclusion that there is an error
+in it. I mean to put a case no stronger than the truth will allow. But
+what I was going to comment upon is an extract from a newspaper in De Kalb
+County; and it strikes me as being rather singular, I confess, under the
+circumstances. There is a Judge Mayo in that county, who is a candidate
+for the Legislature, for the purpose, if he secures his election, of
+helping to re-elect Judge Douglas. He is the editor of a newspaper [De
+Kalb County Sentinel], and in that paper I find the extract I am going to
+read. It is part of an editorial article in which he was electioneering
+as fiercely as he could for Judge Douglas and against me. It was a curious
+thing, I think, to be in such a paper. I will agree to that, and the Judge
+may make the most of it:
+
+"Our education has been such that we have been rather in favor of the
+equality of the blacks; that is, that they should enjoy all the privileges
+of the whites where they reside. We are aware that this is not a very
+popular doctrine. We have had many a confab with some who are now strong
+'Republicans' we taking the broad ground of equality, and they the
+opposite ground.
+
+"We were brought up in a State where blacks were voters, and we do not
+know of any inconvenience resulting from it, though perhaps it would not
+work as well where the blacks are more numerous. We have no doubt of
+the right of the whites to guard against such an evil, if it is one. Our
+opinion is that it would be best for all concerned to have the colored
+population in a State by themselves [in this I agree with him]; but if
+within the jurisdiction of the United States, we say by all means they
+should have the right to have their Senators and Representatives in
+Congress, and to vote for President. With us 'worth makes the man, and
+want of it the fellow.' We have seen many a 'nigger' that we thought more
+of than some white men."
+
+That is one of Judge Douglas's friends. Now, I do not want to leave myself
+in an attitude where I can be misrepresented, so I will say I do not think
+the Judge is responsible for this article; but he is quite as responsible
+for it as I would be if one of my friends had said it. I think that is
+fair enough.
+
+I have here also a set of resolutions passed by a Democratic State
+Convention in Judge Douglas's own good State of Vermont, that I think
+ought to be good for him too:
+
+"Resolved, That liberty is a right inherent and inalienable in man, and
+that herein all men are equal.
+
+"Resolved, That we claim no authority in the Federal Government to abolish
+slavery in the several States, but we do claim for it Constitutional power
+perpetually to prohibit the introduction of slavery into territory now
+free, and abolish it wherever, under the jurisdiction of Congress, it
+exists.
+
+"Resolved, That this power ought immediately to be exercised in
+prohibiting the introduction and existence of slavery in New Mexico and
+California, in abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District of
+Columbia, on the high seas, and wherever else, under the Constitution, it
+can be reached.
+
+"Resolved, That no more Slave States should be admitted into the Federal
+Union.
+
+"Resolved, That the Government ought to return to its ancient policy,
+not to extend, nationalize, or encourage, but to limit, localize, and
+discourage slavery."
+
+At Freeport I answered several interrogatories that had been propounded to
+me by Judge Douglas at the Ottawa meeting. The Judge has not yet seen fit
+to find any fault with the position that I took in regard to those seven
+interrogatories, which were certainly broad enough, in all conscience, to
+cover the entire ground. In my answers, which have been printed, and all
+have had the opportunity of seeing, I take the ground that those who elect
+me must expect that I will do nothing which will not be in accordance with
+those answers. I have some right to assert that Judge Douglas has no fault
+to find with them. But he chooses to still try to thrust me upon different
+ground, without paying any attention to my answers, the obtaining of
+which from me cost him so much trouble and concern. At the same time I
+propounded four interrogatories to him, claiming it as a right that he
+should answer as many interrogatories for me as I did for him, and I would
+reserve myself for a future instalment when I got them ready. The Judge,
+in answering me upon that occasion, put in what I suppose he intends
+as answers to all four of my interrogatories. The first one of these
+interrogatories I have before me, and it is in these words:
+
+"Question 1.--If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely
+unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask
+admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite
+number of inhabitants according to the English bill,"--some ninety-three
+thousand,--"will you vote to admit them?"
+
+As I read the Judge's answer in the newspaper, and as I remember it as
+pronounced at the time, he does not give any answer which is equivalent
+to yes or no,--I will or I won't. He answers at very considerable length,
+rather quarreling with me for asking the question, and insisting that
+Judge Trumbull had done something that I ought to say something about, and
+finally getting out such statements as induce me to infer that he means
+to be understood he will, in that supposed case, vote for the admission of
+Kansas. I only bring this forward now for the purpose of saying that if he
+chooses to put a different construction upon his answer, he may do it. But
+if he does not, I shall from this time forward assume that he will vote
+for the admission of Kansas in disregard of the English bill. He has the
+right to remove any misunderstanding I may have. I only mention it now,
+that I may hereafter assume this to be the true construction of his
+answer, if he does not now choose to correct me.
+
+The second interrogatory that I propounded to him was this:
+
+"Question 2.--Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful
+way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery
+from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?"
+
+To this Judge Douglas answered that they can lawfully exclude slavery from
+the Territory prior to the formation of a constitution. He goes on to tell
+us how it can be done. As I understand him, he holds that it can be done
+by the Territorial Legislature refusing to make any enactments for
+the protection of slavery in the Territory, and especially by adopting
+unfriendly legislation to it. For the sake of clearness, I state it again:
+that they can exclude slavery from the Territory, 1st, by withholding
+what he assumes to be an indispensable assistance to it in the way of
+legislation; and, 2d, by unfriendly legislation. If I rightly understand
+him, I wish to ask your attention for a while to his position.
+
+In the first place, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided
+that any Congressional prohibition of slavery in the Territories is
+unconstitutional; that they have reached this proposition as a conclusion
+from their former proposition, that the Constitution of the United
+States expressly recognizes property in slaves, and from that other
+Constitutional provision, that no person shall be deprived of property
+without due process of law. Hence they reach the conclusion that as the
+Constitution of the United States expressly recognizes property in slaves,
+and prohibits any person from being deprived of property without due
+process of law, to pass an Act of Congress by which a man who owned a
+slave on one side of a line would be deprived of him if he took him on the
+other side, is depriving him of that property without due process of law.
+That I understand to be the decision of the Supreme Court. I understand
+also that Judge Douglas adheres most firmly to that decision; and the
+difficulty is, how is it possible for any power to exclude slavery
+from the Territory, unless in violation of that decision? That is the
+difficulty.
+
+In the Senate of the United States, in 1850, Judge Trumbull, in a speech
+substantially, if not directly, put the same interrogatory to Judge
+Douglas, as to whether the people of a Territory had the lawful power to
+exclude slavery prior to the formation of a constitution. Judge Douglas
+then answered at considerable length, and his answer will be found in the
+Congressional Globe, under date of June 9th, 1856. The Judge said that
+whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a
+constitution or not was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court.
+He put that proposition, as will be seen by the Congressional Globe, in a
+variety of forms, all running to the same thing in substance,--that it was
+a question for the Supreme Court. I maintain that when he says, after the
+Supreme Court have decided the question, that the people may yet exclude
+slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a
+question for the Supreme Court. He shifts his ground. I appeal to you
+whether he did not say it was a question for the Supreme Court? Has not
+the Supreme Court decided that question? when he now says the people may
+exclude slavery, does he not make it a question for the people? Does he
+not virtually shift his ground and say that it is not a question for the
+Court, but for the people? This is a very simple proposition,--a very
+plain and naked one. It seems to me that there is no difficulty in
+deciding it. In a variety of ways he said that it was a question for the
+Supreme Court. He did not stop then to tell us that, whatever the
+Supreme Court decides, the people can by withholding necessary "police
+regulations" keep slavery out. He did not make any such answer I submit
+to you now whether the new state of the case has not induced the Judge to
+sheer away from his original ground. Would not this be the impression of
+every fair-minded man?
+
+I hold that the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country
+without police regulations is historically false. It is not true at all.
+I hold that the history of this country shows that the institution of
+slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these "police
+regulations," which the Judge now thinks necessary for the actual
+establishment of it. Not only so, but is there not another fact: how came
+this Dred Scott decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a negro
+being taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming
+his freedom because the Act of Congress prohibited his being so held
+there. Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there without
+police regulations? There is at least one matter of record as to his
+having been held in slavery in the Territory, not only without police
+regulations, but in the teeth of Congressional legislation supposed to
+be valid at the time. This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery
+to plant itself in a new country even against unfriendly legislation. It
+takes not only law, but the enforcement of law to keep it out. That is the
+history of this country upon the subject.
+
+I wish to ask one other question. It being understood that the
+Constitution of the United States guarantees property in slaves in the
+Territories, if there is any infringement of the right of that property,
+would not the United States courts, organized for the government of the
+Territory, apply such remedy as might be necessary in that case? It is a
+maxim held by the courts that there is no wrong without its remedy; and
+the courts have a remedy for whatever is acknowledged and treated as a
+wrong.
+
+Again: I will ask you, my friends, if you were elected members of the
+Legislature, what would be the first thing you would have to do before
+entering upon your duties? Swear to support the Constitution of the United
+States. Suppose you believe, as Judge Douglas does, that the Constitution
+of the United States guarantees to your neighbor the right to hold slaves
+in that Territory; that they are his property: how can you clear your
+oaths unless you give him such legislation as is necessary to enable
+him to enjoy that property? What do you understand by supporting the
+Constitution of a State, or of the United States? Is it not to give such
+constitutional helps to the rights established by that Constitution as may
+be practically needed? Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution,
+and believe that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath,
+without giving it support? Do you support the Constitution if, knowing
+or believing there is a right established under it which needs specific
+legislation, you withhold that legislation? Do you not violate and
+disregard your oath? I can conceive of nothing plainer in the world. There
+can be nothing in the words "support the Constitution," if you may run
+counter to it by refusing support to any right established under the
+Constitution. And what I say here will hold with still more force against
+the Judge's doctrine of "unfriendly legislation." How could you, having
+sworn to support the Constitution, and believing it guaranteed the right
+to hold slaves in the Territories, assist in legislation intended
+to defeat that right? That would be violating your own view of the
+Constitution. Not only so, but if you were to do so, how long would
+it take the courts to hold your votes unconstitutional and void? Not a
+moment.
+
+Lastly, I would ask: Is not Congress itself under obligation to give
+legislative support to any right that is established under the United
+States Constitution? I repeat the question: Is not Congress itself bound
+to give legislative support to any right that is established in the
+United States Constitution? A member of Congress swears to support the
+Constitution of the United States: and if he sees a right established
+by that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he
+clear his oath without giving that protection? Let me ask you why many of
+us who are opposed to slavery upon principle give our acquiescence to a
+Fugitive Slave law? Why do we hold ourselves under obligations to pass
+such a law, and abide by it when it is passed? Because the Constitution
+makes provision that the owners of slaves shall have the right to reclaim
+them. It gives the right to reclaim slaves; and that right is, as Judge
+Douglas says, a barren right, unless there is legislation that will
+enforce it.
+
+The mere declaration, "No person held to service or labor in one State
+under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any
+law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but
+shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor
+may be due," is powerless without specific legislation to enforce it. Now,
+on what ground would a member of Congress, who is opposed to slavery in
+the abstract, vote for a Fugitive law, as I would deem it my duty to do?
+Because there is a constitutional right which needs legislation to enforce
+it. And although it is distasteful to me, I have sworn to support the
+Constitution; and having so sworn, I cannot conceive that I do support
+it if I withhold from that right any necessary legislation to make it
+practical. And if that is true in regard to a Fugitive Slave law, is
+the right to have fugitive slaves reclaimed any better fixed in the
+Constitution than the right to hold slaves in the Territories? For this
+decision is a just exposition of the Constitution, as Judge Douglas
+thinks. Is the one right any better than the other? Is there any man who,
+while a member of Congress, would give support to the one any more than
+the other? If I wished to refuse to give legislative support to slave
+property in the Territories, if a member of Congress, I could not do it,
+holding the view that the Constitution establishes that right. If I did it
+at all, it would be because I deny that this decision properly construes
+the Constitution. But if I acknowledge, with Judge Douglas, that this
+decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot conceive that I
+would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to give
+such protection to that property as in its nature it needed.
+
+At the end of what I have said here I propose to give the Judge my fifth
+interrogatory, which he may take and answer at his leisure. My fifth
+interrogatory is this:
+
+If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need
+and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
+property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
+or against such legislation?
+
+[Judge DOUGLAS: Will you repeat that? I want to answer that question.]
+
+If the slaveholding citizens of a United States Territory should need
+and demand Congressional legislation for the protection of their slave
+property in such Territory, would you, as a member of Congress, vote for
+or against such legislation?
+
+I am aware that in some of the speeches Judge Douglas has made, he has
+spoken as if he did not know or think that the Supreme Court had decided
+that a Territorial Legislature cannot exclude slavery. Precisely what the
+Judge would say upon the subject--whether he would say definitely that he
+does not understand they have so decided, or whether he would say he does
+understand that the court have so decided,--I do not know; but I know
+that in his speech at Springfield he spoke of it as a thing they had not
+decided yet; and in his answer to me at Freeport, he spoke of it, so far,
+again, as I can comprehend it, as a thing that had not yet been decided.
+Now, I hold that if the Judge does entertain that view, I think that he
+is not mistaken in so far as it can be said that the court has not
+decided anything save the mere question of jurisdiction. I know the legal
+arguments that can be made,--that after a court has decided that it cannot
+take jurisdiction in a case, it then has decided all that is before it,
+and that is the end of it. A plausible argument can be made in favor of
+that proposition; but I know that Judge Douglas has said in one of his
+speeches that the court went forward, like honest men as they were,
+and decided all the points in the case. If any points are really
+extra-judicially decided, because not necessarily before them, then this
+one as to the power of the Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery
+is one of them, as also the one that the Missouri Compromise was null and
+void. They are both extra-judicial, or neither is, according as the
+court held that they had no jurisdiction in the case between the parties,
+because of want of capacity of one party to maintain a suit in that court.
+I want, if I have sufficient time, to show that the court did pass its
+opinion; but that is the only thing actually done in the case. If they did
+not decide, they showed what they were ready to decide whenever the matter
+was before them. What is that opinion? After having argued that Congress
+had no power to pass a law excluding slavery from a United States
+Territory, they then used language to this effect: That inasmuch as
+Congress itself could not exercise such a power, it followed as a matter
+of course that it could not authorize a Territorial government to exercise
+it; for the Territorial Legislature can do no more than Congress could
+do. Thus it expressed its opinion emphatically against the power of a
+Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery, leaving us in just as little
+doubt on that point as upon any other point they really decided.
+
+Now, my fellow-citizens, I will detain you only a little while longer; my
+time is nearly out. I find a report of a speech made by Judge Douglas
+at Joliet, since we last met at Freeport,--published, I believe, in the
+Missouri Republican, on the 9th of this month, in which Judge Douglas
+says:
+
+"You know at Ottawa I read this platform, and asked him if he concurred in
+each and all of the principles set forth in it. He would not answer these
+questions. At last I said frankly, I wish you to answer them, because when
+I get them up here where the color of your principles are a little darker
+than in Egypt, I intend to trot you down to Jonesboro. The very notice
+that I was going to take him down to Egypt made him tremble in his knees
+so that he had to be carried from the platform. He laid up seven days, and
+in the meantime held a consultation with his political physicians; they
+had Lovejoy and Farnsworth and all the leaders of the Abolition party,
+they consulted it all over, and at last Lincoln came to the conclusion
+that he would answer, so he came up to Freeport last Friday."
+
+Now, that statement altogether furnishes a subject for philosophical
+contemplation. I have been treating it in that way, and I have really come
+to the conclusion that I can explain it in no other way than by believing
+the Judge is crazy. If he was in his right mind I cannot conceive how he
+would have risked disgusting the four or five thousand of his own friends
+who stood there and knew, as to my having been carried from the platform,
+that there was not a word of truth in it.
+
+[Judge DOUGLAS: Did n't they carry you off?]
+
+There that question illustrates the character of this man Douglas exactly.
+He smiles now, and says, "Did n't they carry you off?" but he said then
+"he had to be carried off"; and he said it to convince the country that
+he had so completely broken me down by his speech that I had to be carried
+away. Now he seeks to dodge it, and asks, "Did n't they carry you off?"
+Yes, they did. But, Judge Douglas, why didn't you tell the truth? I would
+like to know why you did n't tell the truth about it. And then again "He
+laid up seven days." He put this in print for the people of the country to
+read as a serious document. I think if he had been in his sober senses he
+would not have risked that barefacedness in the presence of thousands of
+his own friends who knew that I made speeches within six of the seven days
+at Henry, Marshall County, Augusta, Hancock County, and Macomb, McDonough
+County, including all the necessary travel to meet him again at Freeport
+at the end of the six days. Now I say there is no charitable way to look
+at that statement, except to conclude that he is actually crazy. There is
+another thing in that statement that alarmed me very greatly as he states
+it, that he was going to "trot me down to Egypt." Thereby he would have
+you infer that I would not come to Egypt unless he forced me--that I
+could not be got here unless he, giant-like, had hauled me down here. That
+statement he makes, too, in the teeth of the knowledge that I had made the
+stipulation to come down here and that he himself had been very reluctant
+to enter into the stipulation. More than all this: Judge Douglas, when
+he made that statement, must have been crazy and wholly out of his sober
+senses, or else he would have known that when he got me down here, that
+promise--that windy promise--of his powers to annihilate me, would n't
+amount to anything. Now, how little do I look like being carried away
+trembling? Let the Judge go on; and after he is done with his half-hour, I
+want you all, if I can't go home myself, to let me stay and rot here; and
+if anything happens to the Judge, if I cannot carry him to the hotel and
+put him to bed, let me stay here and rot. I say, then, here is something
+extraordinary in this statement. I ask you if you know any other living
+man who would make such a statement? I will ask my friend Casey, over
+there, if he would do such a thing? Would he send that out and have his
+men take it as the truth? Did the Judge talk of trotting me down to Egypt
+to scare me to death? Why, I know this people better than he does. I was
+raised just a little east of here. I am a part of this people. But the
+Judge was raised farther north, and perhaps he has some horrid idea of
+what this people might be induced to do. But really I have talked about
+this matter perhaps longer than I ought, for it is no great thing; and yet
+the smallest are often the most difficult things to deal with. The Judge
+has set about seriously trying to make the impression that when we meet
+at different places I am literally in his clutches--that I am a poor,
+helpless, decrepit mouse, and that I can do nothing at all. This is one
+of the ways he has taken to create that impression. I don't know any other
+way to meet it except this. I don't want to quarrel with him--to call him
+a liar; but when I come square up to him I don't know what else to call
+him if I must tell the truth out. I want to be at peace, and reserve all
+my fighting powers for necessary occasions. My time now is very nearly
+out, and I give up the trifle that is left to the Judge, to let him set my
+knees trembling again, if he can. set my knees trembling again, if he can.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Papers And Writings Of Abraham
+Lincoln, Volume Three, by Abraham Lincoln
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